MONROVIA, Liberia, March 10 (UPI) -- The U.N. envoy to Liberia has opened a new office in the southeast of the country designed to bring together the U.N. mission to help prevent instability.
Jordan Ryan, deputy U.N. envoy in Liberia, inaugurated Monday a new joint U.N. office in Zwedru, a provincial capital located in southeastern Liberia.
The Zwedru office is part of an effort to bring together the U.N. mission and five U.N. agencies in Liberia in its mandate to help reform the country and prevent a return to violence following a 14-year civil war, the United Nations reported.
"We have done a lot of planning and lot of work together," Ryan said in a statement.
"It is time for us to change from plenty talk to plenty work now."
Despite steady progress in Liberia reported by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, there is a growing threat throughout the West Africa region from transnational criminal organizations. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, the transnational criminal groups are increasingly taking advantage of weak governments in West Africa and are using the region as a narcotics-smuggling hub to transit illicit drugs from the Caribbean to Europe.
