Aid agencies access Sinje camps

Sinje camps, situated about 50 km northwest of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, which had been cut off by recent fighting were accessed by humanitarian agencies this week, aid workers in Monrovia told IRIN. A team from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, that visited the camps on Friday reported that the situation in and around the camps had improved. "If the trend continues we could return to the camps by Monday," UNHCR Deputy Representative Theophilus Vodounou told IRIN on Friday. "The militia who had moved into the camps and were scaring off the refugees have been ordered to leave by officers from the ministry of defence," Vodounou said. Sinje camps, Vodounou said, are home to some 11,000 refugees and the same number of internally displaced persons (IDPs). A similar case of refugees living side by side with IDPs exists in Zuannah camp near Monrovia where there are 3,000 refugees and more than 10,000 IDPs, he added. However it is the Liberian government policy that refugees and IDPs don't live side by side for "security reasons". The government has now allocated a site in Sinje and another in Segbeh (near Monrovia) for the relocation of IDPs from Sinje camps and those in Zuannah respectively. "We are now in dialogue with NGOs to construct the camps so that the IDPs can move in," Vodounou added. A team from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and that of the World Food Programme also visited the camps early in the week and are planning the next course of action, a humanitarian source said. Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday donated non-food items to some 138 lepers and 400 members of their families who had sought refuge in the Sinje camp, an ICRC release said. A team of delegates, ICRC said, who had gone to assess the situation of IDPs in the town discovered the lepers, who had had to flee the fighting near the northern Liberian town of Kolakare at the beginning of the month. "Abandoned by all and in rags, they finally arrived at a camp in Sinje formerly used by Sierra Leonean refugees, most of whom were repatriated at the beginning of the year," the release added. Sinje camps have been inaccessible for several weeks because of intense fighting, between rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development and government forces who have fought to oust President Charles Taylor's government since 1998.