IRIN Focus on refugee departures and arrivals

The group of refugees listened intently as a visiting UN official praised their resilience. They nodded approvingly as Kinsgley Amaning, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Guinea, urged them to reflect on their experiences so as to help steer their countries in the right direction when they returned home. His message 'say no to violence', appeared to strike a chord among the over 200 mainly Sierra Leonean refugees present at the meeting in Telikoro camp in Albadaria, southern Guinea. Then one refugee, middle aged with dark glasses stood up. A humanitarian worker said later he was blind. "You have spoken on behalf of the Sierra Leoneans. We are still at war. What is our fate?" asked the man, whom someone identified as Pa Camara. "Some of us are afraid," he continued. "We're not going back. In 1997, when there were elections in Liberia, many people went. You saw what happened. So as we tell our Sierra Leonean brothers farewell, think of what to do for the Liberians." Amaning assured the worried refugee that the United Nations had not forgotten the Liberians. "I know that if we don't resolve the problem in Liberia, we are not likely to have peace for a long time in the subregion," he said. Even as he spoke, more Liberians continued to flee their country, adding to the 6,000 who sought refuge in Guinea between January and April. The border between Guinea and Liberia is officially closed, but the Guinean authorities have been allowing refugees to enter at given points. UNHCR officials in southern Guinea said about 300 to 500 Liberians were arriving each week in camps in Nzerekore region, which borders Liberia. The bulk of the encamped Liberians - over 26,000 - are in two camps in Nzerekore. Thousands of other Liberians are said to be living in villages in the region. Fighting around the Liberian town of Gbarnga, 224 km north of the capital, Monrovia, in the second week of May has caused the exodus to increase. Humanitarian sources said about 4,300 Liberians entered Guinea within 72 hours this week. These included about 3,500 who, according to UNHCR, crossed over on 13 May alone. New arrivals in Macenta, near the border with Liberia, said they had travelled for weeks from Lofa, northern Liberia. One woman said rebels had beaten her husband until he became crazy after he refused to join them. Others said their husbands had been taken away by armed men, but they weren't sure to which side they belonged. The group of new arrivals included a number of pregnant women and infants. Many seemed tired and worn out and some had skin diseases. Rebel wars that broke out in Liberia in late 1989 and in Sierra Leone in 1991 sent hundreds of thousands of their nationals fleeing to Guinea. Sierra Leone's war was declared officially in January, prompting UNHCR to organise convoys to repatriate refugees who wanted to return home. About 13,000 Sierra Leoneans returned home between October 2001 and May 2002. The repatriations were suspended on 4 May in connection with presidential and parliamentary elections held in Sierra Leone on 14 May. UNHCR's country representative in Guinea, David Kapya, said that if there were no post-election upheavals, the voluntary repatriations would resume on 21 May. About 500 home-bound Sierra Leoneans left the Mambiya transit centre, some 90 km from the Guinean capital, Conakry, on the last pre-election convoy. One youth said he was happy to be going back home to the eastern mining district of Kono, which he fled in 1998. Did he have any fears? "No," he replied without hesitation. "Di war done finish" (The war had ended). A young woman explained that she decided to go back because she had received a message from her mother back in Kono urging her to return home. The message had been relayed by a traveller from Kono to the refugee camp where she had been staying near Kountaya, some 690 km from Conakry. She, too, was looking forward to going back, she said. "It's my home." However, other Sierra Leoneans preferred to wait and see how the situation back home would evolve before deciding when to return. "I'm dying to go home," Bachir M. Boye told IRIN as the convoy prepared to leave Mambiya. "I'm just waiting for the elections." Boye had worked as a water and sanitation technician with various NGOs in Guinea and, like many refugees he followed events back home very closely. "I don't think people have disarmed totally," he said. "If there is no problem and the election goes smoothly, if there is no fraud, I think there will be peace and total disarmament." In that case, he says, he will head back to Sierra Leone. His caution was shared by some Sierra Leone watchers in Guinea. Much depends, they said, on the conduct of the election, its outcome and reactions to the result. Another key factor, they noted, were the many ex-RUF who have reportedly joined the forces fighting both for and against President Charles Taylor in Liberia, as well as the "Kamajors with nothing to eat who have joined the LURD," as one source put it. The Kamajors were a pro-government militia in Sierra Leone. Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) is the group that has claimed responsibility for the rebel war against Taylor. Other members of the humanitarian community were concerned about the future of the returnees. The two months' supply of food which each returnee gets, along with non-food items, are not enough, said Ramine Rafirasme, public information officer with the World Food Programme (WFP). They need support until the next agricultural season to become self-reliant, he added. WFP's concern, he said, is that if enough resources are not provided to feed the returnees, "everything will go down the drain". At a later stage UNHCR plans to promote and organise more repatriations. If all goes according to plan, some 40,000 will have returned by the end of this year, leaving about 17,000, Kapya told IRIN. The repatriations, he said, would continue until mid-2003. The Liberians are likely to have a much longer wait since the war in their country has been escalating. Liberia's first civil war ended with a 1997 peace agreement that paved the way for elections later that year. However, war broke out again in the northwest of the country between government troops and opponents of President Charles Taylor. For a long time, the fighting was confined to Lofa county in northwestern Liberia. It then spread to Gbarpolu, a new county carved out of what used to be lower Lofa, and, since last week, Bong County, east of Lofa. This year, more than 27,000 Liberian refugees have sought asylum in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, according to UNHCR. With the situation still precarious in Liberia, "UNHCR is not contemplating even facilitating the return of Liberian refugees who want to go back," Kapya said. In fact, UNHCR is bracing for a further influx. The two camps for Liberian refugees at Kouankan and Kola in Nzerekore region had got full. UNHCR is preparing to open a new one in Laine, about 76 km from the Liberian border, with a capacity of about 9,000.