UNHCR steps up efforts to move refugees

Faced with the impending rainy season, the UN refugee agency is increasing its efforts to move tens of thousands of refugees from insecure border areas to safer sites in the interior of Guinea, a spokesman said in Geneva on Friday. Security permitting, UNHCR plans to deploy more search teams into the ‘Parrot’s Beak’ region of southwestern Guinea and continue to move refugees further north, Ron Redmond reported.

The Parrot’s Beak, an isolated wedge of territory that juts into Sierra Leone, has been the scene of fierce fighting between government troops and insurgents since September. As a result of the insecurity, many of the settlements in the area are now deserted and refugees are concentrated in just a few camps: Kolomba on the farthest tip of the Parrot’s Beak now has some 60,000.

So far, UNHCR reported, more than 27,000 refugees have been relocated from the Beak to the area north of the town of Kissidougou. The first new camp, Kountaya, has already reached its capacity of 26,000. A second was opened last week at Boreah in the Albadaria region. Two others, Telikoro and Mandoukoro, are under construction. Their completion would bring the total capacity of the four camps to about 60,000.

UNHCR is also relocating thousands of refugees from the Massakoundou camp west of Kissidougou to Aldabaria.

The refugee agency has been broadcasting radio messages into the Parrot’s Beak area warning refugees of the dangers of walking back to Sierra Leone through rebel-held territory. A Human Rights Watch Report on 3 April stated that Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels had been raping, abducting and killing refugees fleeing camps in Guinea.