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//Att. Subscribers, the following corrects and updates the report titled 'SIERRA LEONE: Repatriation of refugees from Guinea completed' issued on Monday 12 August.//
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has completed the return to their home areas of former Sierra Leonean refugees who had still been displaced in their country.
However, there are still more than 40,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in camps in Guinea and over 30,000 in camps in Liberia, Delphine Marie, UNHCR Public Information officer for Africa, told IRIN from Geneva on Tuesday.
UNHCR said on Friday that the last group of 269 Sierra Leoneans left the locality of Potoru, Bari Chiefdom, in the southern district of Pujehun on Wednesday and headed for their final destinations in Kailahun and Kono in the east. They had stayed in the host community for more than a year, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said.
UNHCR had helped more than 10,000 Sierra Leoneans settle in Bari Chiefdom between March 2001 and February 2002, when returnees from Guinea could not go back to Kono and Kailahun, which were still under rebel control.
The agency had assisted the returnees with shelter material, schooling and medical care in host communities close to their homes. The host communities will be able to use some of the newly built facilities, including wells and latrines, Janowski added.
Repatriation by sea also continued from Liberia, with a fourth boat docking in Freetown on Monday last week, bringing to 1,222 the number of Sierra Leoneans repatriated from Liberia since the beginning of the sea operation on 20 July.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
