Guinea & Sierra Leone
Sierra Leoneans want to go home

afrol.com, 18 October - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday stated that the situation in six refugee camps for Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees in Guinea was "relatively calm," although people there expressed the wish to go home.

When interviewed by the UNHCR, many refugees said they would prefer to go home following the recent violence in the area. The refugees also reported about nutritional problems, especially among young children, as well as the need for clean water and better sanitation. Many camps had received no assistance since UNHCR withdrew from the border areas in mid-September following the killing of the agency's head of office in Macenta.

According to UNHCR, food distribution has returned to some refugee camps in Forécariah and Guéckédou, both border regions, from which the agency and other organizations had been forced to withdraw last month following a spate of violence. 

In Forécariah, the first distribution benefited the refugees who had fled attacks in the Farmoriah and Dakhagbe camps and sought shelter in Kaliah and Kalako. Some of the refugees had not received food for up to two months. The rations distributed now will last them for 45 days. Some 2,000 persons were still present in Farmoriah camp, which initially hosted 4,300 refugees. Another 1,800 refugees have been transferred to Kaliah for safety. UNHCR also recorded thousands of spontaneous returns of refugees to Sierra Leone in the past few weeks.

UNHCR is continuing its assistance to about 300 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia who are sheltered at the Matam centre in the surroundings of Conakry, as well as hundreds of Liberians at the Liberian Embassy in Conakry. Most of these refugees have been there since police rounded up thousands of refugees in the capital last September. UNHCR is carrying out food and non-food distributions.

The Liberian Embassy has started repatriating some of its nationals from the Liberian Embassy in Conakry. On Tuesday last week, a first group of 450 persons was taken back to Monrovia by boat. UNHCR is assisting them with transportation from the Embassy to the harbour. A total of 1,135 Liberians at the Embassy had expressed their wish to be repatriated. Food was provided before the departures, UNHCR said. 

Last week, afrol.com reported that, some 6.000 returnees had repatriated from camps in the Forécariah region to the Lungi area of Sierra Leone, some 30 kms north of Freetown. Still, spontaneous returns of refugees to Sierra Leone continued to take place as a result of trouble in the camps in Guinea. 

Repatriation would probably be on a much larger scale if the return to Sierra Leone had been easier. Last week, a group of several thousand returnees was said to be blocked in Sierra Leone’s RUF-controlled Kambia district.

UNHCR and the government of Sierra Leone last week agreed that the returning refugees will be relocated to a cluster of about 50 villages in a safe part of the Lungi peninsula and hosted by the local population. Assistance will be given to the returnees (shelter, seeds and tools) and to the hosting community, including water and sanitation, educational facilities and construction tools, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.

Source: Based on UNHCR

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