Efforts under way to register Liberian refugees

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has undertaken a major registration exercise for all Liberian refugees in three camps in southeastern Guinea, UNHCR Media Relations Officer Delphine Marie said on Friday. The exercise was intended to provide the refugees with an official status and photo identity card, and to allow humanitarian agencies update their statistics on characteristics of the refugee population, including age, gender, place of origin and other details, she said. The registration started on 17 August in Nonah transit camp, near Yomou in Nzerekore Prefecture, where some 4,720 refugees had been given wristbands by Saturday 24 August. The estimated population at Nonah was 5,300, but some refugees were still being found last week. Registration was also being done at two existing camps at Kouankan, near Macenta, where the estimated refugee population was 33,400, and Kola, in Nzerekore Prefecture, where the estimated refugee population was 6,700. Nzerekore sub-region in southeastern Guinea is believed to host more than 80,000 refugees, predominantly Liberian, 44,000 of whom are assisted in UNHCR camps, according to Marie. However, new Liberian refugees were continuing to enter Guinea on a small scale, she said. The UNHCR office in Nzerekore recently recorded 148 new refugees who were temporarily settled in schools at Koyama (124 people) and Fassankony (24 people). The new arrivals were mainly women, small children and the elderly, and small groups were also reported entering Guinea in the Gueckedou area, Marie added. Meanwhile, Guinean Foreign Minister Francois Fall has denied claims that rebels from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) may be recruiting from refugee camps in Guinea. "I would not say that there are really LURD combatants in the camps," he told the Gabonese Africa No 1 radio station on Sunday. "Our position on this issue is very clear: since we started receiving refugees in Guinea, we have received them indiscriminately." "We have received civilians as well as ex-combatants of other armed factions, who stayed in Guinea for humanitarian reasons," Fall added.