CONAKRY (Reuters) - Thousands of Sierra Leoneans who fled to
neighbouring Guinea during a civil war are due to return home after
elections in the former British colony raised hopes of long-term
stability, the United Nations said on Saturday.
The office of
the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was organising
convoys to voluntarily repatriate some 4,000 Sierra Leoneans from
Guinea's capital Conakry and 1,200 others living in camps around the
southern Guinean town of Kissidougou.
"The first convoy, which
has left, was carrying 140 people ... We'll have to go via Liberia
because of the poor state of some of the roads," Faya Millimono, UNHCR
spokesman in Guinea, told Reuters.
Close to 100,000 Sierra
Leoneans returned home from Guinea with the help of the United Nations
between 2000 and 2004 in the closing stages of more than a decade of
war in Sierra Leone.
But thousands more refused to go back,
hoping to win political asylum in Europe, the United States or
Australia. Some of those living in Kissidougou have spent more than 10
years lobbying the UNHCR to help resettle them elsewhere.
In
September, Sierra Leone held its first elections since the departure of
U.N. peacekeepers, polls won by former insurance executive Ernest Bai
Koroma, who pledged greater prosperity and stability for the country.
But
not all Sierra Leonean refugees want to return from Guinea, itself an
impoverished country where even those living in the capital lack
running water or electricity.
"I lost my father, my mother and
my three children in the war. I don't want to go back, I still don't
feel safe," said Titus Roberts, 43, who has lived in Conakry for 10
years.
Others cling to the hope of being resettled in a third country.
"Here,
like in Sierra Leone, I don't feel safe. We are constantly harassed and
we have nothing to survive," said Hawa Kamara, 35, who lost her husband
during the conflict.
Sierra Leone's war was one of the most
brutal in modern African history. Children were kidnapped, drugged and
forced to fight while rebels hacked the limbs off civilians and
sometimes carved their initials into their victims' backs.
Five
years after the war, Sierra Leone ranks as the least developed country
in the world, according to U.N. statistics. More than 70 percent of the
population live below the poverty line.
"I have to stay here
because I have nothing left in my country," said Burder Wandi, 19, who
has searched in vain for his parents since the end of the war and earns
a living working in a Kissidougou hotel.
