PRESS BRIEFING ON WEST AFRICA BY ASSISTANT HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES

As the refugee situation in West Africa today was clearly the most serious in the world, the new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, would leave on 10 February for that area on his first field mission, Soren Jessen-Petersen, Assistant High Commissioner, told correspondents today during the noon briefing at Headquarters.

During his 10-day trip, Mr. Lubbers would visit Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire.  Apart from getting a first-hand impression of the situation on the ground, Mr. Lubbers planned to try to get clear guarantees from the leaders in the region that they would respect the humanitarian operation, protect humanitarian staff and, above all, protect their own citizens.  In Bamako, Mali, Mr. Lubbers would attend a summit meeting of leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), he added.

There were about half a million refugees in the area -- 125,000 from Liberia and 350,000 from Sierra Leone -- who were caught up in a spiral of violence, insecurity, inaccessibility and poverty, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said.  In and around Gueckedou, Guinea, around 200,000 people had been on the move since September, when fighting in the region had intensified.  At the time, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had been obliged to withdraw its field staff after they were targeted and a UNHCR colleague was killed.  The UNHCR was now engaged in a very dangerous and complex search-and-rescue operation in the forest, and also trying to relocate people to Kissidougou, further north.

In addition to assisting with relocation, the UNHCR was also helping with the facilitation of return of refugees to Sierra Leone.  It was not encouraging return, he stressed, because conditions in Sierra Leone were too fragile.  However, over the last few months, 40,000 to 50,000 refugees had spontaneously returned to Sierra Leone.

The fact that rebels moved with refugees was a matter of concern, he said. The humanitarian operation in the area was in danger of collapsing, unless security arrangements along the borders of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone were put in place.  Strong support was needed for an ECOWAS initiative to deploy its security forces along the borders.  Some new border security arrangement was necessary to secure the safety of refugees, refugee camps and humanitarian staff.

Search and rescue operations were, in part, hampered by logistical constraints of working in a rainforest, he said, in answer to a correspondent’s question, but a lack of security was the overriding obstacle to the operation, as humanitarian workers had been targeted by rebels.

Asked how the UNHCR dealt with rebels among the refugees, Mr. Jessen-Petersen explained that the task of separating rebels from refugees and securing the borders was a political and security operation, not a humanitarian one.  The ECOWAS had proposed as initiative to deploy 1,700 troops along the borders. However, it needed logistical and financial support for this.  There had also been some scepticism expressed about the plan’s feasibility, he noted.

Mr. Lubbers will impress upon the leaders in the region the importance of getting the security arrangements in place, he said, but it was equally important to urge others to support the ECOWAS deployment.  The humanitarian operation could not continue without it, and the consequent suffering would not only be dramatic, but would also have an impact on regional peace and stability.

Asked how much assistance the present Government of Sierra Leone was giving Mr. Lubbers, he said that everybody in the region had welcomed the fact that his first field mission as High Commissioner would be to that region, as this underlined the seriousness and urgency of the situation.  Support was not only being sought from Sierra Leone, but also from Liberia.  It was also necessary to discuss with Guinean authorities how to continue protecting the almost half a million refugees in that country, as Guinean authorities had recently made some strong anti-refugee statements.

Questions had been asked about the feasibility of the ECOWAS operation, given there was no ceasefire in place and unstructured military groups were a source of some concern.  However, the UNHCR was desperate, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said.  Something must be done to secure the operation.  Humanitarian staff were being sent into a situation where international peacekeepers were understandably reluctant to go.  He noted that the Guinean army had escorted humanitarian workers into areas where refugees and displaced Guineans had been scattered.

Without work from humanitarian organizations, without access to people in need, and without delivery of food, medicine and shelter, the consequences could be catastrophic, he warned.  Without international support, refugees and displaced persons might start moving elsewhere -- even back into insecure areas in Sierra Leone.  That could even prove a threat to United Nations operations there, he said.

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