Concerned about the ongoing precarious situation of refugees and internally displaced persons in Sierra Leone, Liberia and
Guinea, MSF released the report "Populations Affected by War in the Mano River Region of West Africa: Issues of Protection,"
in May 2002. The following is taken from the report. Click here to read the full report.

Kouankan refugee
camp, Nzérekoré,
Guinea, July 2002. © Fabrice Cortat
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Today, West Africa remains an intricately linked and complicated
context, both politically as well as in terms of the humanitarian situation.
While the war has been declared officially over in Sierra
Leone and the biggest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world
today (UNAMSIL) has been deployed throughout the country, the
conflict in Liberia is gaining momentum. New waves of Liberian
refugees are moving into Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea looking
for safety. Thousands of others are being displaced again and
again inside of Liberia. Tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans are going
back to their homes, either from neighboring Liberia and Guinea,
or from the internally displaced camps within Sierra Leone.
Hundreds of thousands of people are moving in the sub-region at
the same time, often through the same towns and the same camps.
Many questions are being raised about the manner in which these
movements are taking place. Do these people, who have been fleeing
conflicts for over ten years, have a chance to decide for themselves
if they are ready to return to their homes? Are the necessary
conditions in place for these movements to take place in a humane
and adequate way, according to international standards? Who is
responsible for ensuring the protection of these people in such a
politically charged environment? The human aspect of this conflict,
the rights of the people to protection and humanitarian assistance,
seems to have been lost in the political shuffle.
Sierra Leone
 A family of
refugees returns
home to find their
village devastated
by the war,
Kailahun, Sierra
Leone, April 2002.
The question of
how or where West
Africa's returnees
will find the
resources to rebuild
their lives seems
to have been
relegated to the
sidelines. © David Saveur/Agence VU
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In advance of the elections and subsequent withdrawal of
UNAMSIL, displaced Sierra Leoneans were sent back to their regions
of origin by the UN and the government of Sierra Leone resettlement
programs. It is difficult to consider this a resettlement program in
anything but name. Driven by national and international political
agendas and rife with problems, this process has been poorly
planned, badly organized and ineffectively implemented. For the
majority of the people returning to their homes today in Sierra Leone,
they are going back to nothing. Their houses have been burned to
the ground and entire villages destroyed. There is often no safe drinking
water available, no medical facilities, no schools and no jobs.
Liberia
Since 2000, the war has greatly destabilized Lofa county,
and more recently has made steady progress in Grand Cape
Mount, Bomi and Bong counties, causing people to flee in
front of the advancing hostilities. The voyage that has brought
them to IDP camps has taken months, and in some cases
years. Many people have passed through a series of camps,
always just one step in front of the fighting.
Many families have been attacked by several different
groups during the past year, and these attacks not only
involved abductions but also rapes, killings and burning
people alive in their homes. Many families have had great difficulty
escaping. The final driving force for people to risk passing
through such dangerous areas seems to be lack of food.
Even after they reach a camp, the assistance and protection
the people can expect varies, depending on which camp
they go to. For those who reach the camps close to Monrovia
and close to the offices of humanitarian organizations, there
are many assistance programs. But [in other places] you will
almost never see any NGO or UN presence.
The problems discussed in this report are not new to people
who work in the humanitarian world. In fact they are
depressingly common, especially in the complicated Mano
River region.
In Sierra Leone, the international community is injecting
huge amounts of money, but it is going primarily to
the military part of the peace process. Military operations
on this scale are not only extremely important, but also very
expensive, and very important to be seen as being successful.
But will their success be measured against human
suffering and the denial of human dignity?
In Liberia, the issues of protection are even more lifethreatening.
Civilians have been running from one camp
to the next for years now, still with the international community
hiding from their faces and their stories of horror
behind a thinly veiled game of terminology. How long
will political issues continue to overshadow the humanitarian
needs of the people?
The war in this sub-region does not seem to be going away.
As long as the violence continues the people will remain
in need of humanitarian assistance and protection. The needs which we see today, and that we know will be there
tomorrow, will not go away.
My mother doesn't want me to tell you what happened to me. But
I want to tell you, and I want people to know what happened to
us. I left my village, in Kailahun District, in 1993 when we were
attacked. I was raped and my brother was killed. We fled into the
surrounding bush while the attack continued [for three days].
Finally, we decided to cross into Guinea. We saw that there was no
food for us in Guinea either. My husband and I decided to go back
and try to get food. We turned back into Sierra Leone and went to
our village. We were there for two days when the RUF attacked
again.
– Hannah, 25, a returnee, Kailahun,
Sierra Leone – April 9th 2002.
They told us to be in the repatriation program we had to first go
and register in another camp in the north of Guinea and pay our
own transport. But we had no money, so we decided to return to
Sierra Leone on foot. It took us two days because of our heavy load.
As [we] were are not registered we have no right to any aid. In
Kailahun we have installed ourselves in this house with another family.
There are 27 of us who sleep in three rooms.
– Returnee woman, 25, Kailahun,
Sierra Leone – April 26th 2002.
Sometimes fighters would come and round up people out of the
bush camps and take them to Kolahun. This was either to work for
them (washing clothes, carrying supplies, cooking) or to just go and
sit down with them. The fighters do not like to live alone and they
told us that the civilians are their protection from the enemy.
We decided to leave three weeks ago because things were quiet. Also,
there is no food. We have been living on bush yams and mangos
because the fighters took all our rice, and life is getting too difficult.
Look at my children [three are malnourished; one of them
severely]. Even outside of town, the fighters can take anything
from you, even the clothes you are wearing.
– Liberian refugee woman, Tekoulu transit camp,
Guéckédou, Guinea – March 17th 2002.
I want to go home but I have a lot of questions and a lot of frustration.
My place is burned down. Who will help me to get tools
and material to rebuild it? I do not want to go home until after
elections to see if the peace stays. I also do not want to go back to
an empty village. I am old and do not want to be alone.
– Sierra Leonean refugee woman, age approximately 65,
Boreah camp, Guinea – March 1st 2002.
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