ICRC reunites families

After years in a Guinean refugee camp, the International Committee of the Red Cross reunited two Sierra Leonean children with their families in Freetown on Thursday, the humanitarian body said. A brother and a sister, aged 15 and 17 years, were met by their joyful families when they flew into Freetown, accompanied by an ICRC delegate, from Conakry, the Guinean capital. Another eight-year-old boy will be reunited with his parents in Kenema, eastern Sierra Leone, on Monday. All three children had been in refugee camps in the Guekedou area of Guinea. “The separation of young children from their parents is one of the most pernicious consequences of the conflict in Sierra Leone,” the ICRC said. The return of these children marked the ICRC’s first successful cross-border operation since it resumed its activities in Sierra Leone in May 1999. The organisation said it was looking for the parents of another 182 unaccompanied minors staying in camps in Guinea, and would soon begin reuniting other refugee children in Liberia with their families in Sierra Leone.