CHILDREN-SIERRA LEONE: A Race Against Time to Save Young Refugees

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jun 5 1998 (IPS) - More than 150 Sierra Leonean children under the age of five died in the month of May in various refugee camps in neighbouring Guinea, according to an official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner Soren Jessen-Petersen said this week in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, that the new refugee arrivals at the camps in Guinea are mainly women and children who have fled the killings, mutilation and rape carried out by retreating forces of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which was ousted from power in February.

The majority of the refugees suffer from malnutrition and various diseases contracted while they were in the bush before crossing the border into Guinea.

“The UNHCR has launched an appeal in Geneva and in other places around the world for 7.3 million U.S. Dollars to help meet the needs of more than 250,000 Sierra Leoneans who have recently arrived in Guinea,” Jessen-Petersen said.

“The situation is a race against time and very soon the rains will start and resources for the refugees are running out,” he added.

Sierra Leoneans who have visited the refugee settlements in the Guinean camps of Forecaria, Famoriyah and Guekedou, also report that it is the women and children who are in need of urgent care.

“The children and their mothers sleep in the open air, because there is no proper shelter. Food and medicine for them is another serious problem,” Paramount Chief Abu Kongombba told IPS Friday. Chief Kongombba, who is also a member of parliament, is the spokesperson for the Kono District Task Force, which has visited the refugees.

According to Kongombba, up to five children die daily. The camps have no supplementary feeding or vaccination programmes for children under five. “The situation is very desperate and to delay is dangerous,” the Chief said.

The UNHCR’s appeal, according to Jessen-Peterson, would cover relief aid for the new arrivals in Guinea and plans also are underway to cater for food, drugs, shelter and blankets for the refugees.

“We are meanwhile faced with the logistical problems as donors response is slow and inadequate,” the UNHCR official said. “We urge donors to respond generously and urgently so that we can continue providing life-saving relief for the refugees, especially children.”

Teenagers living in the camps say that although they managed to survive in the bush and cross over into Guinea, life in the camps has been another series of hardships.

Fourteen-year-old Mohamed Kamara said: “I have to go around the town of Guekedou to beg for alms so that I and my surviving relatives will have something to eat”.

And a young teenage girl said that she and many girls like her engage in commercial sex to survive. “It is not a life that I wish to live, because after all, I should be in school.”

The plight of the Sierra Leonean children in Guinea has prompted calls from local newspapers and welfare organisations for the Sierra Leone government to bring the children home.

“While we are preparing for the Day of the African Child (June 16) celebrations, hundreds of other Sierra Leonean children are languishing in the refugee camps in Guinea and Liberia,” said Bockarie Sillah, a child welfare worker in Freetown. “Something ought to be done about this urgently.”

Sources in UNHCR and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also say that hundreds of unaccompanied children are also stranded in the forests on the Guinean border with Sierra Leone.

The officials fear that the retreating rebels of the AFRC and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) may capture the children, arm them and send them to the frontline.

“This is a hopeless situation and since there is little we could do about the children in the forest, I think those who have showed up in the Guinean forest towns and refugee camps should be cared for,” a UNICEF official told IPS.