GUINEA: UNITED NATIONS REFUGEE CHIEF RUUD LUBBERS VISITS CAMPS AT CENTRE OF WORLD'S WORST REFUGEE CRISIS

Record ID: 275138

  • Title: GUINEA: UNITED NATIONS REFUGEE CHIEF RUUD LUBBERS VISITS CAMPS AT CENTRE OF WORLD'S WORST REFUGEE CRISIS
  • Date: 12th January 2001
  • Summary: MASSAKOUNDOU, KATKAMA CAMP, GUINEA (FEBRUARY 11, 2001) (REUTERS) 1. SLV UNHCR LANDCRUISER MOVES THROUGH CROWD OF REFUGEES 0.06 2. MV UNHCR HIGH COMMISSIONER RUUD LUBBERS WALKING THROUGH CAMP 0.17 3. SCU REFUGEES WITH TABLES, BENCHES AND OTHER BELONGINGS ON THEIR HEADS WALKING TOWARDS UN TRUCK 0.21 4. SCU LUBBERS TALKING TO SIERRA LE
  • Embargoed: 27th January 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MASSAKOUNDOU, KATKAMA CAMP, GUINEA
  • Country: Guinea
  • Reuters ID: LVA2WQXHKGHXZ579SXMK9Z9X91TY
  • Story Text: The United Nations' refugee chief Ruud Lubbers visited
    camps in Guinea on Sunday (February 11) and promised to help
    resolve what his agency has termed the world's worst refugee
    crisis.

    Lubbers met Sierra Leonean refugees who had fled
    their camp on Friday (February 9) due to new fighting in the
    southern border town of Gueckedou between Guinea's army and
    foreign-backed dissidents.

    Humanitarian workers said gunfire could again be heard
    coming from Gueckedou on Sunday (February 11) morning. They
    quoted military sources as saying the rebels had attacked and
    Guinean soldiers were preparing a counter-attack.

    About 15,000 people fled to Katkama camp from another at
    Nyaedou, further south, on Friday after hearing reports of
    further fighting. Aid workers said almost all the 34,000
    people who had lived in Nyaedou had now left.

    "We need, indeed, a political new initiative to work with
    the surrounding countries, including rebels and what have you,
    to get a priority for the humanitarian situation in which at
    least there is a minimum of safety for people needing these
    sort of safety corridors," Lubbers said after driving in a
    convoy past villages destroyed in previous rebel attacks.

    He said he was prepared to talk to whoever he needed to in
    order to establish such corridors, including Sierra Leone's
    Revolutionary United Front if necessary.

    But he said ending the fighting was a task for governments
    and the international community.

    "We want to go home," chanted women and children as
    Lubbers drove into a camp at Massakoudou. Others among the
    35,000 residents held up signs saying "We need no transit
    camp".

    Lubbers, on his first field trip since taking over as head
    of the UNHCR agency last month, listened as refugee spokesmen
    explained that, having come to Guinea to escape civil war,
    they had found themselves once again in a war zone.

    They now called on the United Nations to help them, either
    by repatriating them or by finding a safe third country.

    The UNHCR can now move up to 2,000 refugees a day away
    from the conflict zone by truck to new camps further north in
    Guinea.

    Hundreds of people have been killed in months of attacks
    on Guinea's southern border. Guinea accuses Liberia and Sierra
    Leonean rebels of supporting Guinean dissidents.

    Liberia, in turn, accuses Guinea of harbouring dissidents
    who have been fighting government forces in northern Liberia
    since September.

    The regional bloc ECOWAS plans to send nearly 1,700
    troops to the border to halt the fighting.

    UNHCR says an estimated 250,000 refugees from Sierra
    Leone and Liberia and displaced Guinean villagers are cut off
    from international aid in the so-called Parrot's Beak area of
    Guinea, which juts into rebel-held territory in Sierra Leone.

    Those refugees are trickling out of the area at a rate of
    several hundred a day, but aid workers say the situation of
    those left behind in the Parrot's Beak is desperate.

    Those who make it as far as makeshift camps like Katkama
    can still face food and water shortages. Most refugees at the
    camp have been forced to spend the last two nights in the open.


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