Guinea hosted about 515,000 refugees, including more than 160,000 from Liberia, an estimated 350,000 from Sierra Leone, and 4,000 from Guinea Bissau.

More than 250,000 new Sierra Leonean refugees arrived in Guinea during the year, while at least 15,000 returned home.

Over 100,000 Liberian refugees repatriated during the year.

Refugees from Liberia

Most Liberian refugees arrived in the early 1990s to escape Liberia's civil war. The end of Liberia's conflict in 1996 and its peaceful presidential election in 1997 opened the door to large-scale repatriation from Guinea.

The majority of Liberian refugees lived in settlements in Guinea's Forest Region, located north of the border with Liberia, in three major towns: Guéckédou, Macenta, and Nzérékouré. Many rural refugees survived by sharecropping, working as contract laborers, or selling firewood in urban areas. The Guinean government was generally hospitable to refugees and provided school buildings and access to local medical facilities.

The size of the Liberian refugee population has long been a matter of uncertainty due to poor registration procedures, the large numbers of refugees who appeared to live on their own, and regular movements of people back and forth across the border. A UNHCR registration exercise in 1997, for example, found that the Liberian refugee population in Guinea was one-third smaller than previously believed.

In March 1998, the first repatriation convoy of nearly 400 Liberian refugees departed from Guinea. By year's end, approximately 50,000 Liberians officially repatriated, according to UNHCR. Counting assisted and spontaneous returns, it appeared that approximately 130,000 Liberians repatriated from Guinea during the year.

Some refugees remained reluctant to repatriate due to lack of schools and jobs in Liberia and fears of insecurity there. While Liberia's peaceful presidential elections in mid1997 encouraged many to return home from Guinea, refugees from certain ethnic groups feared possible persecution under Liberia's new government because of unresolved rivalries from the civil war. They were therefore more cautious about returning home.

Refugees from Sierra Leone

Guinea experienced the largest new refugee influx in Africa during 1998, as more than a quarter-million refugees from Sierra Leone fled to Guinea to escape a renewed insurgency in their country. They joined more than 100,000 Sierra Leonean refugees who had fled to Guinea in previous years. More than 350,000 refugees from Sierra Leone remained in Guinea at year's end.

The majority of Sierra Leonean refugees lived in Guinea's Forest Region, where the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia meet. The area also contained a large number of Liberian refugees. Other Sierra Leonean refugees lived in Forécariah, southeast of the capital, Conakry.

New Sierra Leonean refugees arrived in extremely poor condition, suffering severe trauma, malnutrition, and disease. Many trekked hundreds of miles and hid in the bush for weeks before they were able to cross the border to Guinea, according to relief workers.

A disproportionate number of new arrivals were reportedly women, children, and the elderly. Aid workers in Guinea's refugee camps registered nearly 500 victims of mutilation and reported that an untold number of women and girls had been raped, according to UNHCR.

During May alone, 147 children below age five died in camps in Guinea, according to UNHCR. That month, the UN Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees visited victims of rebel atrocities and issued an urgent appeal to help address humanitarian needs caused by the Sierra Leonean exodus. He declared that "those who turn their weapons against civilians in this way...should be brought to trial. We have to see to it that justice is done."

Refugee movements were fluid throughout the year. Some refugees who arrived in Guinea prior to 1998 returned to relatively stable areas of Sierra Leone, while new refugees fled to Guinea from Sierra Leone's rebel-held territory.

Many of Sierra Leone's civil servants escaped to the Guinean capital, Conakry, during a 1997 coup in Sierra Leone. Most returned home on their own in March 1998 when their democratically elected government regained power. Approximately 15,000 Sierra Leonean refugees repatriated from Guinea by year's end.

Humanitarian Assistance

Lack of access and difficult logistics severely hampered relief operations. Most roads leading to refugee camps in the Forest Region were unpaved and in poor condition. They became virtually impassable during the rainy season, which began in May and lasted through October.

In May, UNHCR and WFP warned that thousands of Sierra Leonean refugees risked being cut off from humanitarian assistance due to impending rains and transport capacity that was stretched to the breaking point. Aid agencies lacked the vehicles required to provide relief supplies to Africa's largest new refugee population, as well as move incoming refugees away from the border to accessible camps before the onset of the rainy season.

UNHCR moved thousands of Sierra Leonean refugees from inaccessible makeshift camps near the border, but many more remained stranded in remote areas. By September, heavy rains and deteriorating road conditions had effectively blocked delivery of relief supplies to some camps in western Guinea for two months. Aid agencies and Guinean government officials increasingly stressed the need to move the new refugees farther from the border and to obtain solutions to logistical hurdles, such as road repair.

Protection Concerns

The proximity of Sierra Leonean refugee camps to the Guinea-Sierra Leone border caused major protection concerns.

Sierra Leonean rebels launched periodic cross-border raids on refugee camps and Guinean villages. In June and July, hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leonean refugees were cut off from relief supplies when Guinean security forces closed a road in the Forest Region and banned travel to the area in response to a cross-border attack in which rebels killed civilians and Guinean security forces.

On September 1, rebels crossed into Guinea and attacked Tomandou camp, 80 km (50 miles) from Guéckédou, killing ten people, including seven refugees, according to UNHCR.

Security forces arrested or detained suspected rebels at the border as they tried to enter Guinea. At year's end, UNHCR had not obtained access to the detainees to assess their asylum claims.

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