Guinea
Emergency teams underway to assist refugees in Guinea

afrol.com, 23 December - After this months heavy attacks on civilians and refugees in Guinea by Sierra Leonean and Liberian terrorists, tens of thousands of people have been uprooted. While the Guinean army and ECOWAS forces are to respond to the military threat, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and organisations help avoiding a humanitarian disaster.

The UNHCR yesterday announced it now would deploy three emergency teams to Guinea and Sierra Leone in response to the displacement of tens of thousands of refugees following recent attacks in in southern Guinea. The refugees, from Sierra Leone and Liberia, have been fleeing camps in Guinea’s insecure border region since early December. Many are trying to move to safer areas in the north and east. Others are trying to reach Conakry in order to return to Sierra Leone. All are believed to be in urgent need of help. 

- The three emergency response teams, 46 people in all, are being deployed immediately from UNHCR offices and NGO partners worldwide and will join UNHCR’s Guinea-based staff in trying to get help to the tens of thousands of refugees, said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond yesterday. "Their mission is to provide immediate emergency assistance; to assist with internal relocation to relatively safe areas within Guinea; and to assist those refugees who wish to return to Sierra Leone."

UNHCR operations in Guinea have been severely restricted since September, when a staff member was killed by unidentified attackers in the southwestern town of Macenta. Fighting intensified in early December, further affecting access to a string of camps housing more than 300,000 refugees in the Guéckédou-Kissidougou area. UNHCR has had no access to some 280,000 refugees in a string of camps around Guéckédou since early this month and their condition is unknown.

Redmond said that "UNHCR staff who traveled to the Kissidougou region this week found some 4,000 refugees on the road between Kissidougou and Faranah, 130 kms to the northwest. The refugees were exhausted, some having walked more than 100 kms with little or no food. Many are in urgent need of medical assistance."

Massakoundou, a camp where local authorities have transferred thousands of refugees who had converged on the town of Kissidougou, is now jammed with some 35,000 refugees. Massakoundou was designed for 20,000 people and the overcrowding is dangerously stretching its infrastructure.

Three UNHCR trucks arrived in Kissidougou from Conakry yesterday (Thursday) carrying tons of food, blankets, buckets, soap and kitchen utensils, according to Redmond. "Distribution will benefit both the fleeing refugees and the displaced Guinean population," he stated. 

More trucks are on the way. On the return trip to Conakry, the trucks are being used to carry vulnerable refugees who want to go to the capital and then on to Sierra Leone. Medical supplies have been flown to Kissidougou and clinics will be opened in different locations, including Massakoundou.

In Conakry, UNHCR and MSF are building a transit centre for up to 1,000 people. "We have also hired a ferry which will make five trips a week carrying returning refugees from Conakry to Freetown; a seven-hour voyage," says Redmond. "The first ferry left Conakry on Wednesday with 324 voluntary returnees." The Sierra Leone Embassy, meanwhile, continues operating its own ship as well. The latest ferried nearly 3,000 people to Freetown on Tuesday.

Food distribution and assistance has been stepped up at the Sierra Leone and Liberian embassies in Conakry to refugees gathering there while they await their departure home. An estimated 25,000 refugees have returned to Sierra Leone since September, about 80 percent of them former refugees from the camps in Guéckédou and Forécariah. The number of refugees remaining in Guinea is now estimated at 328,000 Sierra Leoneans and 122,000 Liberians.

One of the three emergency teams will be deployed in Sierra Leone to assist returnees from Guinea. An additional transit center is being built in Freetown to receive the increasing numbers of returnees. Once processed by UNHCR in Freetown, returnees who are from government-controlled areas of Sierra Leone will be provided transport home. Returnees from rebel-controlled areas will be taken to reception centers in Waterloo and Jui, or directly to returnee settlements in government areas.

Efforts to hinder spillover
Meanwhile, regional and global efforts are made to curb the terrorist intrusions into Guinea from the neighbouring countries. There is proof of Sierra Leonean RUF terrorist involvement, and strong indications of an involvement of the Liberian government of ex-terrorist Charles Taylor (who ten years ago financed the establishment of the Sierra Leonean RUF to destabilize the neighbour country and still is involved in illegal diamond and weapon deals with these terrorists). Substantial pressure is put on the RUF and Charles Taylor, especially from the UK and the US, to stop supporting the attacks on Guinea.

The West African ECOWAS forces are to support Guinean troops guarding the regional borders, including the borders between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The task will be difficult, as the border goes through wooded and mountainous landscape, but might prove a last effort to hinder a spillover of the dirty diamond war of Liberia and Sierra Leone into Guinea. Latest news from Sierra Leone confirm that the RUF seem to give in to UN demands of deploying peacekeepers on the vast areas occupied by them, thus making a possible future base in Guinea an option.

Source: Based on UNHCR and afrol archives

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