Washington DC — More than 450,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia face life-and-death choices as conflict in their countries continues to spill across borders.
Fueled by the lure of diamonds and the availability of small arms, the wars have made refugee camps in the border area of neighboring Guinea increasingly dangerous. Fighting among rebel groups and between rebels and government forces is threatening the stability of Guinea itself, as well as making it impossible for refugees to either stay or leave with any assurance of safety.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says the crisis is the world's most dramatic refugee situation, but the drama gets little play in international media. Refugee workers in the region are eager for the conflict to get the media attention that could move it onto the agenda of policy makers. Hundreds of thousands of the people who fled war and are now threatened again are in rural areas, outside the scrutiny of the international community.
Liberian refugees, some of whom left home as long as a decade ago, enjoyed warm support from local people in Guinea, who shared food and supplies. Sierra Leone refugees, who began pouring across the border three years ago, also found their neighbors willing to share what little they had. However, that welcome has been tested by the widening conflict, which endangers Guineans as well as refugees, and by the fact that international aid to refugees does little to help or repay those who assisted them.
For more than four months, both refugee camps and international workers have come under attack. Refugees fleeing to the coast to look for passage home tell of rapes, lootings and murders on the 700-kilometer trip overland. But thousands have managed to make it to the Guinea capitol of Conakry, where the UN has opened a transit camp for 6000 people.
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In the camps, refugees not yet under direct attack must decide whether to stay put or risk the journey. Once in Conakry, they must try to find whether their home areas are under rebel control and decide whether to risk returning. Even those who decide to chance it are plagued by wondering how long to delay sailing in the hope of reuniting with missing family members separated in the chaos of flight. On Tuesday night, 270 people, somewhat fewer than expected, sailed for Sierra Leone on a vessel chartered by the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration. But on Wednesday, 356 people boarded another boat to make the trip.
Jean Philippe Chauzy, an IOM spokesperson, says that embedded in the organization's mandate is that refugee migrations be done in an orderly and dignified manner. That includes, he says, allowing people to move with material items they have managed to acquire. "Worldly possessions, whether a motor bike or something else," he says, "can be the factor that makes a person independent and able to earn a living."
Chauzy says that when he was recently on the docks in Conakry, a woman burst into tears at the loss of her sewing machine. "But the story had a happy ending. When the hold was unloaded, the machine was found."
