SIERRA LEONE-POPULATION: Returning to an Uncertain Future

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Feb 17 1997 (IPS) - The thousands of former refugees who have been returning here this month had little choice but to take up offers by the UNHCR and their government to repatriate them.

Not that they were forced — the repatriation was voluntary — but the country they have left, Liberia, is hardly safer than their own since it is still struggling to achieve peace following a civil war that lasted from 1989 to 1996. In mid-1996, Monrovia, where most of the 120,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in Liberia are concentrated, was hit by fighting between two rebel factions

“I decided to return home because life is no better in Liberian camps,” says 46-year-old Baindu Sannoh, one of about 2,000 Sierra Leoneans airlifted and boated in from Liberia over the past two weeks. After all, I hope to go back to farming, even though our family home was burnt down by the rebels.”

Over half a million Sierra Leoneans are scattered in neighbouring Guinea and Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Senegal and Mali. They fled to those countries to escape the five-year war waged by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels against the state.

The two sides signed a cease-fire in November 1996, but it has been violated on a many occasions, a fact that had worried some of the organisers of this month’s repatriation, conducted by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in collaboration with the Sierra Leonean government.

“We were not entirely sure about how it would turn out given the bursts of skirmishes in some parts of the country,” said Joseph Cline-Thomas, one of the co-ordinators of the repatriation. “But, on the whole, it’s so far been going good.”

Officials of the Ministry of Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Resettlement — the government department partnering the UNHCR in the repatriation drive — told IPS Friday that all was set for the return of the many Sierra Leoneans who fled their country over the past five years.

One official said a batch of refugees from Mali “is due to arrive anytime from today (Friday) under the auspices of the UNHCR” while some of the 200,000-odd Sierra Leoneans housed in a camp in Guinea were next in line.

The UNHCR’s country representative in Sierra Leone, Akilaja Akiwumi, said bringing back all the refugees from the six countries is expected to take a year. The UNHCR official added that, having been informed by the military high command that 90 percent of the country was now safe, the UN agency had sent out appeals to the Sierra Leoneans to return home.

“The repatriation of refugees from Monrovia would send the correct signal to all the refugees in neighbouring countries,” Akiwumi said.

But some of the returnees are worried about their future in Sierra Leone, especially since their homes and villages were burnt or pillaged by rebels and renegade soldiers who took advantage of the civil war to attack and plunder settlements as well as road convoys.

John Bona, who left his home in the eastern district of Kailahun a few years ago because of rebel attacks, complained that the supplies he and the other returnees received from aid agencies were not enough for people turned into paupers by the war.

“Where would I sleep with my family of 10?” he asked. “Do I have to reside in a refugee camp again in my own country?”

He argued that “donors” should help rebuild the returnees’ burnt homes and supply them with farming tools and seeds. “This would help us forget the psychological traumas associated with the war and we would be able to resettle,” he said.

Hundreds of people repatriated this month have already left the Waterloo Camp — 25 kms east of here and where the returnees are being accomodated — for their home towns and villages in the southeast and north of the country. The elderly and other vulnerable groups such as children receive food rations from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Committee of the Red Cross in collaboration with local relief organisations.

One of the returnees’ biggest fears is that they may once again be affected by the insecurity in some parts of the country, especially the north and the east.

In Kailahun, which the RUF claims as its headquarters, there have been reports of clashes recently between the rebels and Kamajors, local hunters who fought alongside the national army during the civil war.

People who have gone back to their homes in the north have complained of organised attacks on their villages and the theft of their property.

“What seems to be happening,” says Peter Kana, a political analyst here, “is that criminals in the countryside are organising gangs and attacking returnes for their basic possessions. This has to be halted by the government if the returnees are to have faith in the whole process.”