RIGHTS-SIERRA LEONE: Government Disturbed Over Unicef Report

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Aug 7 1999 (IPS) - Sierra Leone’s President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has expressed concern about last week’s UN report, which revealed a catalogue of horrifying cases of abuse against children, and diseases, in the strife-torn West African country.

The report, contained in the 1999 Progress of Nations Report of the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), says 30 percent of the children in Sierra Leone will die before the age of five from preventable diseases.

“As a president, it is painful to learn that Sierra Leone is the second most risky country in the world to live in,” Kabbah says.

He says the report should not “depress” Sierra Leoneans, but that it should instead motivate them “into improving conditions for our children.”

“We should allocate our human and material resources, and mobilise other local resources for promotion of overall child welfare,” Kabbah says.

Unicef’s representative in Sierra Leone, Joanna Nan Gerpen, says the West African country “may soon see a rapidly rising number of deaths due to AIDs as well as large number of orphaned children whose parents have died of AIDs.”

These fears are borne out of the fact that many of the children abducted were raped and used as sex slaves, by rebel forces, and among the dozens released so far, a good number have either tested positive for HIV, or simply returned pregnant.

According to official reports, the conflict in Sierra Leone, which erupted in 1991 and ended last month, has left more than 200,000 children without schooling and an estimated 10,000 separated from their families.

While 3,000 children are associated with the rebel forces, about 1,500 are believed to be with pro-government militia groups.

Kabbah, in signing the peace deal with rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the Togolese capital of Lome last month, dedicated the whole agreement to the children of Sierra Leone.

A two-year old girl Memuna Mansaray, whose hand was cut off by rebels, was the symbol of the abuses children face in war-torn Sierra Leone. She was taken to the signing ceremony on Jul 7.

UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, will visit Sierra Leone later this month, “to study the post-war needs of children and the extent to which those needs are addressed in concrete and ongoing ways.”

“The rights, protection and welfare of children is one of the most important issues facing Sierra Leone as it emerges from a brutal conflict…The international community must make child welfare a prominent, integral and durable part of any peace process,” he says in a statement.

The Lome peace deal calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and non-combatants by Sierra Leone’s belligerents.

But while the government has released virtually all political prisoners and started a process of discharging child combatants, the rebels have yet to free the children in their custody.

Some 500 freed children and ex-child combatants have been re- united with their families, since the signing of the peace accord on Jul 7, according to the Seventh-DAy Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).