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UNHCR officials have taken representatives of the US State Department to visit refugee camps in Guinea. The team travelled to Forecariah Prefecture in the southwest, UNHCR said on Tuesday.
Protection staff from the refugee agency had found in earlier visits to camps in Forecariah that although roadblocks set up by Guinean militias had been dismantled, the security of the refugees had not improved significantly. “Refugees venturing outside the camps continued to be harassed,” a UNHCR spokesman said.
More than 450,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia are camped in Guinea.
The protection staff also found that health and community services in the area had deteriorated as a result of the lack of maintenance and one school had been closed. However, refugees are now able to cultivate their fields outside one of the camps with the help of a local nongovernmental organisation. This should help improve the nutritional status in the camp, the spokesman said.
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