50,000 returnees in need of assistance, OCHA says

Over 48,000 Guinean migrants who returned from Cote d'Ivoire after the outbreak of civil war in that country, are living in precarious conditions in remote areas inGuinea near the Ivorian border and urgently need assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. OCHA said it conducted a survey of the returnee populations in five prefectures along the border with Cote d'Ivoire between September and November 2003 and found the local communities were hosting about half the estimated total of 100,000 returnees to Guinea without any external assistance. "While the integration of these returnees has generally been smooth and not led to noticeable social tensions, the difficult economic circumstances dentured in the area due to the conflict in Cote d'Ivoire have placed a considerable strain on weak social services, in particular the sectors of health, food security and water and sanitation.," OCHA said. "Diverse needs have emerged an are likely to increase if left abandoned, with the potential of degenerating into a long-term crisis around the axis of chronic poverty," it warned. The returnees began arriving in eastern Guinea soon after civil war broke out in Cote d'Ivoire in September 2002. OCHA said they now represented eight percent of the population in the remote frontier prefectures of Lola, Beyla, Kankan, Mandiana and N'Zerekore. It also noted that 50 percent of the returnees were children. OCHA estimated there were nearly 54,000 people in the families in southeast Guinea hosting the refugees who were directly affected by the influx. That gave a total needy population in the area of 102,000. With Guinea's impoverished government generally unable to provide social services, these host families were left to carry the burdening of feeding and looking after the returnees, OCHA said. Since there was little work available locally to enable the returnees to generate their own income, their arrival had created a huge economic strain on the already poor host community, OCHA said . OCHA pointed out with some concern that no UN agency was mandated to look after the interests of migrants returning to their country of origin. "This has led to situation where returnees, who often arrive under the same conditions as refugees and third country nationals, have not always been monitored and received the same protection and assistance implied by fundamental humanitarian principles," it said. OCHA noted that the UN World Food Programme was providing food for school meals in two of the five prefectures surveyed, but added; "much still needs to be done in terms of protection of civilians in Guinea affected by the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire. Guinea currently plays host to about 80,000 refugees from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire. Most of these live in the southeast of the country where the 100,000 Guinean returnees from Cote d'Ivoire are also mainly located. However, unlike the returnees, the refugees receive substantial aid from the UN refugee agency UNHCR and several other relief organisations. The full OCHA report on Guinean returnees is posted at: www.humanitarianinfo.org