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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

September 24, 2002
Posted to the web September 24, 2002

Ouagadouogou

The humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) released a report on Tuesday that raised concerns about the protection of populations affected by war in the Mano River Union sub-region, comprising Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

While the war has been declared officially over in Sierra Leone and UNAMSIL - the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, the biggest peacekeeping force in the world - has been deployed throughout the country, the conflict in Liberia was gaining new momentum, MSF said.

West Africa remained an intricately linked region, which complicated the political and humanitarian contexts of events, it added.

Tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans were going back to their homes, either from neighbouring Liberia and Guinea or from camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) within the country, MSF stated.

New waves of Liberian refugees were also moving into Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea, looking for safety, while thousands of people were being displaced again and again inside Liberia, the agency said.

Hundreds of thousands of people were moving in the sub-region at the same time, often through the same towns and the same camps, it added.

For the majority of the people returning to their homes in Sierra Leone, they were "going back to nothing", it added. "Their houses have been burned to the ground and entire villages destroyed."

MSF warned that "there was often no safe drinking water available, no medical facilities, no schools and no jobs" - especially in the harder-hit rural areas in the east and north, where the bulk of re-settlers were also being sent.

Very few projects are in place for installing basic services in many of areas where the displaced are being resettled, it added.

The organisation noted that the issue of protection of displaced populations was even "more life threatening" in Liberia than other countries of the sub-region, with civilians having had to run from one camp to another for years.

See full report at: http://www.msf.org