WFP delivers food to remote refugee camp

The restoration of relative calm in southwestern Guinea has enabled the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide emergency food rations to 25,000 refugees in Kolomba camp, located in the Parrot’s Beak, WFP said in a communique on Thursday. The food and other relief items are being delivered by the French NGO ‘Premiere Urgence’. Kolomba had been cut off from humanitarian assistance since an upsurge of fighting in December 2000 between government forces and insurgents. Despite recent improvements, the security situation in the area remains fragile, with limited access for UN humanitarian workers. Prior to the fighting, the Parrot’s Beak, a wedge of Guinean territory that juts into Sierra Leone, sheltered up to 140,000 refugees in various camps. UNHCR reported earlier this week that there were about 80,000 refugees still in the area. WFP reported that the whereabouts of many of the refugees were uncertain, but that it could confirm that some 50,000 were still in the Parrot’s Beak. “Humanitarian agencies are working to relocate them to new camps in the Albadaria area, 160 kms north of Gueckedou,” the agency said. Kolomba, located at the tip of the Parrot’s Beak, is the biggest camp in the area. It has 30,000 refugees. About 30,000 refugees, who fled the Parrot’s Beak and camps near the southwestern towns of Gueckedou and Kissidougou, have already been transferred to Albadaria where UNHCR has set up two new camps. WFP is providing food relief in the camps, Kountaya and Boreah, which have 28,000 and 2,000 refugees respectively. Food is also being delivered to another 3,000 refugees who are at the Katkama transit point, 50 km south of Kissidougou, waiting to be transferred to new installations in Albadaria, and to another 4,000 at a transit camp in Conakry for people who have opted to return home. Altogether, WFP is providing food for more than 125,000 Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees in Guinea, and to some 170,000 Guinean IDPs. WFP said its main concerns now were the security situation in the Parrot’s Beak and adjoining areas and logistics, since roads become impassable during the rainy season, expected to begin in earnest around June. When the rains come, trucking in food with the heavy lorries currently used will be extremely difficult, so WFP is trying to stock food close to refugee camps before then, the agency said.