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Sierra Leone:

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BackSierra Leone:

2 R E F U G E E S

T H E E D I T O R ’ S D E S K

When U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in late 1999

urged member states to join a bold new crusade to help

millions of civilians caught in an unending series of

wars by subordinating the very basis of their power—

sovereignty and the sanctity of national borders—to the

greater good of humanitarian action, he touched off

what promises to be one of the most important and con-

troversial debates of the new millennium.

Many of these victims, people who have managed to

escape the chaos of their immediate surroundings and

reach a neighboring country where they are classed as

refugees, are already entitled to international legal assis-

tance under the 1951 Refugee Convention. At the core of

Mr. Annan’s appeal was the fate of between 20-25 million

additional civilians who remain in their own countries and

whose safety and well being is often far more precarious.

Predictably, perhaps, the world community has already

split into two broad groups. Western and industrialized

nations widely support the concept that the U.N. should,

on occasion, involve itself in the internal affairs of nations

to help hapless civilian victims of war. Nations such as

China and third world countries argue that sovereignty

and non-interference in internal affairs drive internation-

al relations and not humanitarian issues (see Refugees

magazine, N° 117, The hot issue for a new millennium).

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Ambassador to the world body,

recently joined the public debate. “What is a refugee?”

he asked in the Security Council. “Two-thirds of the

homeless people in the world are classified with the odi-

ous acronym of ‘internally displaced persons (IDPs)’” the

legal term used to describe civilians uprooted in their

own countries, “but they’re really refugees.”

He said that the definition of the term ‘refugee’ was out-

dated and should now include the estimated 20-25 mil-

lion IDPs worldwide. The mandate of UNHCR, which

already cares for an estimated 21.5 million refugees and

other groups, should be expanded to include the inter-

nally displaced, he said.

Roberta Cohen, a refugee expert at the Washington-

based Brookings Institution, said the situation sharply

differentiating the two groups had become ‘absurd’ and

that today “we have to have a system that addresses the

needs of people on both sides of the border” but she

questioned whether UNHCR should be the organiza-

tion tasked with the problem.

High Commissioner Sadako Ogata has voiced similar

concerns. At a time when major donor governments are

trimming their lending to such organizations as

UNHCR and emphasizing direct aid to crisis areas, who

would fund a greatly expanded UNHCR mandate? Too,

would the organization be able to help both refugees

and IDPs on each side of a border without compromis-

ing its original mandate — ending up helping neither

group effectively?

Even those issues, however, may appear easy to solve

compared with the fundamental dilemma. Helping the

internally displaced requires the consent of govern-

ments which may be battling for their very survival in

civil war type situations. Judging by the opening salvoes

in this debate few capitals in the regions where unrest is

most prevalent appear willing to compromise their

power.

The debate seems set to continue for years to come.

The debate gathers momentum

The bulk

of Somalia’s

population, like

this family, has

been uprooted

by years of war.

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2 E D I T O R I A L

The debate over internally displacedpersons gathers momentum.

4A chance for peace in Sierra Leone, but a cease-fire is fragile.By Ray Wilkinson

ChronologyA brief history of Sierra Leone.

16 C E N T E R F O L D M A PRecent world events

18 W E S T A F R I C A

Refugee problems throughout West Africaare all interlinked.By Corinne Perthuis

21 I C E L A N D

Refugees find an unlikely havenin a faraway place.By Ray Wilkinson

24 T I M O R

Going home is only half the battle.By Paul Stromberg

26 K O S O V O

An evaluation of UNHCR’s performanceduring the Kosovo emergency.

28 S H O R T T A K E S

Brief stories from around the world.

30 P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

31 Q U O T E U N Q U O T E

C O V E R S T O R Y

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4A drawing by SierraLeonean refugeechildren in Guinea

vividly illustrates the chaoswhich has gripped theircountry for a decade. Arecent peace agreement hasbrought renewed, if fragile,hope for the country.

26An independentevaluation assessesUNHCR’s

performance during theKosovo emergency. Itunderlined several majorweaknesses but added thatmany important factors werebeyond the agency’s control.

21 Iceland is an unlikelydestination forrefugees. But some

recent arrivals are helping tochange many of the island’shabits, including its cuisine.

EEddiittoorr::Ray Wilkinson

FFrreenncchh eeddiittoorr::Mounira Skandrani

CCoonnttrriibbuuttoorrss::Anne Encontre, Raouf Mazou,Kingsley Amaning, Andrej Mahecic,Khassim Diagne, Diederik Kramers,Guy Noel Ouamba, FatoumataSinhoun Kaba, Christine Mougne.

EEddiittoorriiaall aassssiissttaanntt::Virginia Zekrya

PPhhoottoo ddeeppaarrttmmeenntt::Anneliese Hollmann,Anne Kellner

DDeessiiggnn::WB Associés - Paris

PPrroodduuccttiioonn::Françoise Peyroux

AAddmmiinniissttrraattiioonn::Anne-Marie Le Galliard

DDiissttrriibbuuttiioonn::John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot

MMaapp::UNHCR - Mapping Unit

RReeffuuggeeeess is published by the PublicInformation Section of the UnitedNations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed bycontributors are not necessarily thoseof UNHCR. The designations andmaps used do not imply the expressionof any opinion or recognition on thepart of UNHCR concerning the legalstatus of a territory or of its authorities.

RReeffuuggeeeess reserves the right to edit allarticles before publication. Articlesand photos not covered by copyright ©may be reprinted without priorpermission. Please credit UNHCR andthe photographer. Glossy prints andslide duplicates of photographs notcovered by copyright © may be madeavailable for professional use only.

English and French editions printedin Switzerland by ATAR SA,Geneva.Circulation: 206,000 in English,French, German, Italian, Japanese,Spanish, Arabic, Russian andChinese.

IISSSSNN 00225522--779911 XX

CCoovveerr:: Sierra Leonean refugeesawait a food distribution inneighboring Guinea. U N H C R / C . S H I R L E Y

UUNNHHCCRRP.O. Box 25001211 Geneva 2, Switzerlandwww.unhcr.ch

N ° 1 1 8 - 2 0 0 0

CORRECTION: INREFUGEES ISSUE 1 17 THEPHOTO CREDIT ON PAGE24 SHOULD HAVE BEENUNHCR / B . NEELEMAN.

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By Ray Wilkinson

SierraLeone triesto put abrutal warbehind itand build alastingpeace

T he very name of the place, Casablanca Field, is redolentwith the same sense of romance and intrigue inspiredby the Hollywood classic movie, Casablanca. In the neardistance palm trees sway gently in an onshore breezeand a gentle swell from the Atlantic Ocean laps the

beach. A ramshackle village, alive with all the noise, cooking smellsand bustle of any African township, spreads higgledy-piggledy acrossthe flank of a softly sloping hill.

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WE WILL FORGIVE…WE WILL NEVER FORGET

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WE WILL FORGIVE…WE WILL NEVER FORGET

War amputees at a specialcamp in the Sierra Leonecapital, Freetown.

6 R E F U G E E S

A visitor, already warned aboutthe tragedy of the township, isnevertheless beguiled at first bythe splash of color, the very live-liness and the apparent normalcyof the place. Then, as one localgives directions to a passer-by, hegesticulates animatedly with whatis left of the stump of his rightarm. A smiling girl, perhaps sixyears old, gaily hops by oncrutches and waves. In the shadeof a nearby hut, a barber expertlycuts the hair of a customer, one-handed. Shockingly, reality in-trudes and is overwhelming.

This is a center for some of thevictims of one of the most vicious wars ofmodern times, the nearly decade-old civilconflict in the west African nation ofSierra Leone. Virtually all of the country’s4.4 million people were forced to flee theirhomes at one time or another, seekingsafety in the surrounding bush or trekkingto neighboring states, especially Guinea

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and Liberia, to become refugees. Tens ofthousands of persons were killed andwounded, unknown numbers of womenand girls were raped, entire villages wererazed and their occupants kidnapped in aconflict rooted in ethnic and regional ri-valries and an ugly scramble for the coun-try’s rich gold and diamond deposits.

But just as Bosnia will forever be as-sociated with “ethnic cleansing” andRwanda with genocide of the Tutsis, thestruggle in Sierra Leone is symbolizedby the fate of one particular group ofvictims—the thousands of innocentcivilians whose arms and legs werehacked off indiscriminately by rebel sol-diers whose sole aim appeared to be tospread terror among the population andintimidate the government.

More than 1,800 of these amputeesand their families live in the officiallynamed Amputee and War WoundedCamp at Casablanca, which is situatedin a suburb of the capital, Freetown.Two-year-old Memuna is the youngest

victim here. Her mother and father werekilled during a 1998 invasion of the city.Her right arm was amputated after it wasshot away by a gunshot wound. On the ve-randah of one house a group of men, allwith a single arm, is learning how to be-come barbers. A small factory, the onlyone of its kind in Sierra Leone, turns out

Market women, members of a powerful civic action group, meet in Freetown to discuss local events and peace prospects.

A hopeful sign for the future in downtown Freetown.

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artificial limbs for the vic-tims. There is a waiting listof at least 2,000.

A DOUBLE AMPUTEETwenty-eight-year-old

Abdul Sankoh is the head-master of the camp schooland one of its most tragic vic-tims. When rebels invadedand almost captured Free-town in January, 1999,Sankoh —no relation to guer-rilla chieftain Foday Sankoh—fled into the bush. He wasseized several days later as heforaged for mangoes and al-though he offered to act as aporter carrying food, he wasrecognized by one gunmanand denounced as a teacherand traitor.

The guerrillas burneddown his village and Sankoh’saccuser seized an ax from thevictim’s own home, forcedhim to the ground andslashed off his right hand.The rebel then amputated hisleft hand before cutting himaround the mouth and slic-ing off part of his ear as he layunconscious. “Go to the pres-ident (Kabbah),” the rebels

taunted, as they did to many other war vic-tims. “He will give you your arms back.”

As he tried to make his way to safety,the heavily bleeding Sankoh was shot atand almost killed by friendly troops be-longing to the West African military forceECOMOG which was fighting the insur-gents on behalf of the civilian governmentand surrounding countries. He eventuallywalked into Freetown with his wife andtwo children and helped establish theschool for hundreds of youngsters at theamputee center.

It is not only the horrors of the past,however, which continue to haunt theschoolteacher, but a dread of the future.After slowly describing his physical de-struction at the hands of the rebels, per-haps even more painfully he told a visitor,“I cannot even go to the toilet on my ownor clothe myself. My wife is a youngwoman. I expect her to leave me. What isher future with me? I am a freak.”

And what of the chances of co-existingwith the young men who unleashed sucha reign of terror on the country if the peace

process does hold? “We only say we willforgive them,” the embittered teacher said.“But when they are disarmed there willbe no forgiveness. There will only be re-venge. There will be revenge.”

Surprisingly, given the scale of brutal-ity during years of war, Sankoh’s warningwas a rare call for revenge, at least pub-licly, among scores of persons interviewedrecently by Refugees inside Sierra Leoneitself and among the 470,000 SierraLeonean refugees in neighboring Guineaand Liberia.

FORGIVE BUT DON’T FORGET“We cannot forget what has happened,”

s a i d S u n d i f uM u s t a f a i nG u i n e a’s Fo re -cariah camp. “Butfor the sake ofpeace we will for-give. Just give uspeace.”

Zainab Ban-gura, the chair-person of a groupcalled The Cam-paign for GoodGovernance, anumbrella organi-zation embracingtrade unions, churches, civil associationsand other groupings said, “This is a pro-cess born not of love, but of necessity. We

have to try to bury the horror, and forgiveand move on. Though of course we willnever forget.”

Bangura’s group has been influential inrescuing Sierra Leone from the abyss ofperpetual war which began in 1991 whenformer army corporal Foday Sankoh andhis Revolutionary United Front (RUF)took up arms against then civilian Presi-dent Joseph Momoh, articulating years ofrepression of the majority of the country’scivilians. Momoh was ousted in a 1992 mil-itary coup, but the country returned tocivilian rule when lawyer Ahmad TejanKabbah was elected president in multi-party elections in 1996 and signed a peace

accord withSankoh’s rebels.

Sierra Leonecontinued to see-saw between warand peace, civilianrule and militaryrepression. Thef o l l o w i n g ye a ra r m y m a j o rJohnny Koromatoppled Kabbahand Sankoh joineda ruling militaryjunta. The U.N.and neighboring

states successfully isolated the regime in-ternationally. Internally, Bangura’sfledgling organization launched a cam-Ã

Main refugee locations and refugee return areas in west Africa.

Tens of thousands ofpersons were killed andwounded, women and girls were raped,entire villages wererazed and theiroccupants kidnapped.

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paign of civil resistance and virtually shutdown the country for 10 months untilNigerian-led ECOMOG troops drove thejunta out of Freetown and reinstated Kab-bah in March, 1998.

The civilians flexed their muscles againduring 1999 peace talks in the Togo capitalof Lome. When they felt Kabbah, Sankoh

and Koroma were ignoring their concerns,they brought Sierra Leone to another stand-still for 24 hours. Both sides got the message.“People say we don’t have guns and so wedon’t have power,” Bangura said in an inter-view. “We have power. We have peoplepower.”

Prodded by the civilians at home and

à by an international community whichonly now had begun to focus on the scaleof atrocities being committed, the warringfactions signed an agreement on July 7,1999, forming a coalition government.They agreed to disarm rebel soldiers, rein-tegrate them into society and bring hun-dreds of thousands of refugees home.

8 R E F U G E E S

To escape, he ripped his ownwounded arm off…

Alie K. a tailor and father of seven chil-dren, was captured by rebels when theyattacked his village of Serekolia in May,1998. The insurgents burned all the vil-lage homes down before chaining Alie toa boy from a neighboring village and lead-ing them into the bush. After going onlya short distance the guerrillas decided toamputate his left hand. “Three of themdid it, one pointing a gun, the others cut-

ting,” Alie remembers.They placed his hand on top of a tree

stump and slashed it four times until itwas left hanging by slivers of skin and tis-sue. The rebels, who were led by a youngcommander with the nickname ‘Moskito’also slashed his right hand one time be-fore whipping him and a friend and chas-ing them away from their compound.

Like many similar atrocities commit-

ted in Sierra Leone, the rebels gave no rea-son for mutilating the villager, but theydid hand him a letter for Nigerian troopsbacking the civilian government, pre-sumably giving their reasons for fighting.

As he crashed through the bush, Alie’swounds continued to bleed. There wereno bandages available. Eventually, he said,he ripped the remnants of his own lefthand away and threw it into the bush, be-cause he “could not hold it together whilerunning.” He eventually linked up withhis family and walked to neighboringGuinea to seek sanctuary, his wound stillunattended until he reached a local hos-pital. B

Displaced people live amidst the destruction in Freetown.

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WORKING FOR A BREAKTHROUGHUgandan diplomat Francis Okelo spent

two years as the special representative ofthe U.N. Secretary-General in trying to se-cure a breakthrough, before leaving thepost at the end of 1999.

He described the peace process: “I be-gan work with a staff of two, a secretaryand a political officer. I set myself threeobjectives: to help remove the junta whichwas then in power; to end hostilities; andto help re-establish constitutional rule anda permanent peace structure.”

For much of his shuttle diplomacy,Okelo felt totally isolated, a seemingly in-visible presence amid the ongoing carnage.Even when Kabbah returned to power, theUgandan’s mission remained precarious.

“At one point there was an illusion thatthe rebels had been defeated,” he recalled.“It was a phoney calm however.” When heraised the possibility that the war couldnot be won militarily and negotiationswere the only solution, he became a vir-tual pariah.

Strangely, the turning point came dur-ing the rebel invasion of Freetown in early1999. “We saw the problem coming a mileaway,” the diplomat said. “It was obviousthen there had to be a dialogue, but I couldhave been lynched in the streets for advo-cating a cease-fire at the time.”

Eventually, talks did get underway inLome. “The people had become totallytraumatized,” Okelo said. “The only wayout of the quagmire was to get out of it,whatever the cost. Perhaps peace could beobtained through the exhaustion of bothsides.

“That is why the government acceptedthe rebels in a coalition government andwhy it granted a blanket amnesty to thefighters, ” he said. “Amnesty was not a choice.It was a necessity. Striking a deal with thedevil was the price that had to be paid.”

But, added the departing envoy, “Theparties in Sierra Leone have put down thedeposit. Don’t lose the sale.”

The amnesty was possibly the most con-troversial part of the peace deal and hasbeen widely denounced by hu-manitarian organizations. Offi-cials who helped negotiate it,however, insisted, like Okelo,that it was the only deal on thetable. “Justice has not been per-verted, it has been delayed,” in-sisted one high-ranking Africanofficial. “Without that blanketamnesty, the rebels would not

have stopped shooting and we could nothave started the peace process.”

“We have to move on,” said Zainab Ban-gura, but at some point in the near future

“we must also explore what happened andwhy. Until we go back and get the answers,reconciliation will never be complete.”

Freetown is contemplating the estab-lishment of a Truth andReconciliation Commissionsimilar to one in SouthAfrica which explored themisdeeds of that country’sapartheid era.

One of the most grue-some questions such a bodywould have to explore is thegenesis of the mutilation

1787Local chiefs sell a sliver of land to Britishrefugees. This is later used to settle freedAfrican slaves and the largest settlement iscalled Freetown.

April 27, 1961Sierra Leone, an area covering nearly 72,000square kilometers (27,699 square miles)bordering on the Atlantic Ocean, Guinea tothe north and east and Liberia to thesoutheast, wins independence from Britain.Freetown becomes its capital.

1978President Siaka Stevens makes the country aone-party state. He quit in 1985, aged 80 andhanded former army chief of staff JosephMomoh a sparsely populated country (4.4million people at the start of the newmillennium) rich in diamonds, gold, iron oreand bauxite.

March 23, 1991Former army corporal Foday Sankoh and hisRevolutionary United Front take up armsagainst President Joseph Momoh, beginning adecade-long civil conflict in which more than10,000 persons were killed, tens of thousandswere deliberately mutilated and half thepopulation were forced to flee their homes.

April 29, 1992Army captain Valentine Strasser oustsPresident Momoh in a military coup sparkedby frustration with the war.

January 16, 1996In turn, Strasser is ousted by his deputy JuliusMaada Bio who promises multi-partyelections and civilian rule. Ahmad TejanKabbah wins the March 15 elections and signsa peace deal in November of that year withSankoh’s rebels.

1997The peace deal quickly unravels. Sankoh is put

under house arrest during a visit to Nigeriabut Major Johnny Paul Koroma leads an armyrevolt against President Kabbah. Sankoh ralliesto the coup but the United Nations slaps afuel, arms and travel ban on the newlyinstalled military junta.

1998Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops drive the juntaand rebels from Freetown and reinstateKabbah in March, the first time in Africa thatneighboring states have restored a civilianleader after a coup. Sankoh is extradited fromNigeria to Freetown where he is convicted oftreason and sentenced to death. A reign ofterror continues throughout the country,including an orchestrated rebel campaign tosever the limbs of civilian victims.

1999Junta loyalists and rebel allies almost takeFreetown in an attack during which anestimated 5,000 people die, but peace talkseventually get underway later in the year.

July 7, 1999After earlier signing a cease-fire agreement inMay, a peace accord is reached in Lome, thecapital of Togo, in which the rebels obtainfour cabinet seats in a national unitygovernment in return for laying down theirarms.

Late 1999-2000Disarmament continues, but only slowly.Many rebels remain in the countryside andattacks and harassment against civilianscontinue. Sierra Leonean refugees insurrounding countries express their desire toreturn home —but only after all combatantsare disarmed. Contingency plans are drawn upby agencies such as UNHCR to help hundredsof thousands of people return to theirhomes—but large scale movements dependon the success of the disarmament andreintegration process.

SIERRA LEONE AT A GLANCE

Sierra Leone is symbolized by thethousands of innocent civilians whosearms and legs were hacked offindiscriminately by the rebels.

10 R E F U G E E S

à campaign, the systematic severing oflimbs and the gruesome vocabulary whichaccompanied the atrocities. Victims wereoften offered the macabre choice of ‘shortsleeves’ or ‘long sleeves’ —being cut aboveor below the elbow. The guerrillas namedtheir campaign, somewhat incongruouslybut ominously ‘No Living Thing.’ Younginductees were sometimes initiated by be-ing forced to kill their own parents andmutilate neighbors.

Under whatever code name the rebelsoperated, one thing is already clear—it wasa systematic and well-organized campaignof terror. Some commentators suggestedritual mutilation was rooted in local his-tory, but African journalist Thomas Ka-mara insisted, “Such a campaign is un-

precedented in Africa. I know of no histor-ical links between what has just happenedand anything that has preceded it.”

Zainab Bangura believes the rebels “arestill underestimating the level of atroci-ties they committed and their impact onthe country. ” She is equally emphatic thatwhile the fate of the amputees was terrible,the women of Sierra Leone probably suf-fered even more.

“The agony of the amputees is the vis-ible sign of suffering in Sierra Leone,” shesaid. “The invisible atrocity is the onewhich was organized against the womenof this country. It was a well-organizedcampaign to subdue the women of thiscountry by abducting women and younggirls, raping and gang raping them and

turning some into killing machines. Wemust never overlook this silent sufferingon the day of reckoning.”

ANOTHER CHANCEIn downtown Freetown, under a mag-

nificent centuries-old cotton tree whichdwarfs everything around it is a sign:“Sierra Leoneans, love one another as Godloves You.” It is the country’s symbolichope for the future. And despite the bar-barities of the recent past, Sierra Leonehas been given another chance.

After ignoring the war for so long, theU.N. late last year began dispatching In-dian and Kenyan military units which willform part of a 11,100 strong internationalforce to bolster the peace process.

Former child soldiers learn car repair as part of their rehabilitation into civil society.

Branded a rebel

Sahr ran afoul of former juntasoldiers when he made the brashdecision to return to his hometownin Sierra Leone from Guineawhere he had sought sanctuary asa refugee. A group of rebels cap-tured the 29-year-old miner as hewas sheltering in the bush. Afriend who was captured at thesame time was immediately placedin front of a firing squad. “Father,do not kill me,” he implored. “I amnot your father,” one soldier said,and the rebels shot him down.

Sahr was one of nine civilianswho were rounded up at the sametime and their fate was hotly de-bated among the gunmen. “If wedon’t kill them ourselves we shouldmark them so the Kamajors (a lo-cal pro-government militia) or theGuinean soldiers will kill them,”one rebel said. The kidnappedcivilians were tied down so theycould not resist and each weredeeply cut with razors with therebel initials RUF (RevolutionaryUnited Front). Their heads werethen roughly shaved in a crudecross and they were again beatenwith machetes.

When a second group of eightcivilians were captured later thesame day they, too, had theirchests, backs and foreheads cutwith the same RUF initials andthat of a second group, AFRC.When one man escaped, two othermen were shot in retaliation. An-other escapee inadvertently wan-dered back into the rebel camp andwas gunned down on the spot.

The Sierra Leonean minereventually escaped and made hisway back to Guinea, but his trou-bles were far from over. Much asthe rebels had predicted, when hewas stopped by one group of vigi-lantes they mistook him for aguerrilla. He was flogged with abuckle belt and kicked all nightuntil he was able to make his wayback to a refugee camp. B

11R E F U G E E S

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The United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reopenedits Freetown office. Shortly after the Lomepeace agreement was signed, regional UN-HCR officials met and drew up contin-gency plans which anticipated that per-haps as many as 170,000 refugees fromGuinea, Liberia and Gambia would returnby the end of the year 2000 as peace tookhold. UNHCR field offices would then beopened in Sierra Leone to assist the repa-triation and reintegration of the refugees.

The planning was essential to antici-pate a ‘best case scenario’ but proved to beoverly optimistic.

Inside the country, many areas re-mained no-go zones for humanitarianagencies such as UNHCR with ‘banditry’

—including robbery andrape— still widespread.

Short term, the key toprolonging the peace ef-fort was the disarma-ment of thousands offighters, but that contin-ued fitfully. At the timethis article went to press,several thousand fightershad emerged from thebush and surrenderedtheir weapons, but manyothers remained at largeand some ‘field comman-ders’ were vowing to con-tinue the war.

Some rebels said theyhad not been paid anagreed bonus for surren-dering their arms. Manyothers apparently fearedretribution once they hadsurrendered and had nomeans to defend them-selves.

U.N. Secretary-Gen-eral Kofi Annan recog-nized the fragility of thepeace accord, and in early2000 asked that the U.N.force be increased from6,000 to 11,100 men in-cluding 12 infantry bat-talions and support units.The Security Council inFebruary approved theexpansion.

But even if disarma-ment is successful aneven more difficult, long-term problem must be

tackled; the successful reintegration of notonly huge numbers of refugees, but alsothe guerrillas.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees andcivilians displaced within Sierra Leonehave all indicated that once disarmamentis complete they will go home as quickly aspossible and as one of the poorest coun-tries in the world, Freetown will certainlyneed them. “These refugees will be com-ing back with a lot of skills they will havelearned, even in the camps, ” said ZainabBangura. “They want to come home andthe country desperately needs them.”

The future of the guerrillas is anothermatter. The international community inthe past has devoted limited funds and ashort time span to obscure conflicts like

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Murder… and then rapeWhen rebel gunmen seized part of the

capital of Freetown during a 1999 assault,the Conteh family was caught in the mid-dle of the fighting and captured. As the at-tackers terrorized the family’s mother, herhusband begged them to release her, onlyto be shot dead on the spot. A hystericalwife burst into tears during the ruthlessexecution and the gunmen killed her, too.

Two sons and a teenage daughter, MissA., were forced to accompany the rebelsas they were pushed out of town, beingemployed as porters to carry the rebelsloot. When one brother collapsed, ex-hausted, he was executed as he lay on theground. His younger sibling was gunneddown as he tried to escape to a neighbor’shome.

Miss A.’s ordeal continued. BetweenJanuary and March, 1999, she was repeat-edly gang raped by thugs she could onlyidentify as ‘P1’ ‘05’ ‘55’ and ‘Daramy.’ Shesaw other women routinely gang rapedduring her captivity. She was later releasedduring an exchange of rebel prisoners andcivilians and eventually reached Guinea.

Because of the severity of her experi-ences, at the time of Refugees going topress, Miss A. had not even been able tobegin a psychological healing process. B

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Sierra Leone. Because of those parameters,problems such as ‘reintegration’ had to fitinto a convenient but implausible time slot.

But as Bosnia and Rwanda proved onlyrecently, healing the mental wounds of wartakes far longer than rebuilding the phys-ical scars. Sierra Leone will be no different.

CHILD KILLERFather Joseph Berton has lived in Sierra

Leone for 30 years. He narrowly escapedwith his own life early last year when he

was captured for 20 days during whichtime four sisters were killed by guerrillas.He now runs a center for around 160 chil-dren —both the victims of the war andsome child killers— in an idyllic formerholiday resort on the coast just outsideFreetown.

On one bungalow housing the childrenis scrawled the ominous message ‘Thishouse is covered by the blood of years.’ A15-year-old youth nicknamed “Killer Cap-tain” glares morosely at a visitor saying

nothing. He has admitted being a rebel andkilling an unknown number of people andwhen he first arrived was violent, ag-gressive and withdrawn.

A 16-year-old girl who was abductedwhen she was seven, admits that “I useda gun” but refuses to say anything further.

“To look at them now, I wouldn’t callthem children anymore” says FatherBerton who added that some of his chargesoccasionally leave the center to go back totheir home villages —if they still remem-

Learning skills in Bo town ready for the peace.

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ber where that is— but often return, unable to face their fellow villagers.

But perhaps because of the long timehe has spent in difficult situations, FatherBerton remains optimistic about the long-term future of Sierra Leone. “I’m tellingyou, these kids were made by God withshock absorbers thick enough for thetoughest four wheel drive,” he says in acolorful metaphor. “They can take it andthey can recover. But rehabilitation can-not be done overnight. Look how long ittook Europe to become ‘civilized.’”

In the upcountry Kpayama center, 17former child soldiers are receiving basiceducation and other lessons before beingreunited with their families. The major-ity have killed civilians and become drugaddicts. They are supposed to stay sixweeks, but some stay one year. It will takemuch longer even than that for them tostand a chance of becoming totally reha-bilitated.

Fifteen-year-old Jonathan was capturedeight years earlier when rebels attacked hisvillage and killed his mother and father.

“They gave me guerrilla training. Theygave me a gun,” he says in a monotone. “Did you take drugs?” “Yes.”“Did you kill civilians?” “Lots.”“Do you think that was wrong?” “It wasjust war, what I did then. I only took or-ders. I knew it was bad. It was not mywish.”“What do you want to do when you fin-ish school here?” “I want to go back intothe military. I have the knowledge to gothere.”

NEW APPROACHESThough the war in Sierra Leone may

at one time have been viewed in isolation,UNHCR and other humanitarian orga-nizations in recent years have begun totry to tackle such problems on a regionalbasis.

The weapons which fuel the fightingin Sierra Leone are supplied by outsidearms suppliers and smuggled in via coun-tries such as Liberia. That state has its ownmassive refugee problem (In a bizarre sit-uation, even as Sierra Leone was beingripped apart in the 1990s by its own war, anestimated 100,000 Liberian refugees pre-ferred to take their chances there than faceanother civil war in their own country).

Guinea hosts the largest number ofrefugees in Africa, a total of 489,000 peo-ple mainly from Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Increasingly, Guinea has warned the

Amputee war victims

outside world that it cannot continue tobe a benevolent host to so many people andwatch its own infrastructure crumble.

UNHCR restructured its field operationsin 1998, creating a regional directorate forwest and central Africa and mechanisms toallocate manual and financial resources ina more flexible and timely manner through-out the region and to try to eliminate over-lap and waste.

It has begun to promote the idea of bur-den sharing among states, including pro-jects to help refugee host countries such asGuinea and their indigenous populations.

UNHCR, in collaboration with theWorld Bank and the United Nations De-velopment Program (UNDP) alsolaunched the so-called Brookings Process,named after the Washington-based thinktank, the Brookings Institution, to exam-

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No Sankoh,no SierraLeone

As armed guerrillasclosed in on his village,chief K. ordered womenand children to escape intothe bush while 80 men,armed with a motley selec-tion of 17 single shot riflesand few cartridges, tried todefend their homes.

They were no match forthe attackers and the areawas quickly overrun. ChiefK. escaped into the bushand watched as all thebuildings except themosque were burned down.The following morning ashe sifted through the debrisand discovered the bodiesof two villagers, the chiefwas captured.

The rebels slashed hisfoot and attached a padlockto his right ear saying,”Thisis your earring.”

Worse was to follow.Though his life was appar-ently spared because hewas the son of a powerfulparamount chief, the guer-rilla commander decided toamputate his fingers butnot kill him, so he could de-liver a letter to the author-ities warning Sierra Leone’spresident “No FodaySankoh (the guerrilla com-mander), no Sierra Leone.”

They also left histhumb, which they saidsymbolized “One love, OneSierra Leone.”

Because the machetewas blunt, the rebels had tohack at the victim’s handrepeatedly. To make surethe chief reached a friendlyvillage and delivered therebels warning, the localcommander personallytook a rope and tied itaround the victim’s hand asa tourniquet to stop theflow of blood. B

ine such issues as methods of bridging thegap between emergency humanitarian as-sistance and long-term development.

The three organizations are also at-tempting to “raise attention to the regionaldimensions of national conflicts in WestAfrica and facilitate a discussion on whethercountry-centered response to conflicts gen-erally favored by donors is appropriate.”

After one recent fact finding mission tothe region, the three agencies said there wasstill a lot of work to be done in this area andthat “the regional effort is not moving asquickly as envisioned.” The borders betweenGuinea and Liberia remained closed, the

report said, political and military allianceswere constantly changing and the internalsituation in some countries remained “un-certain.”

The mission identified other areas ofconcern including the need to more deeplyengage some West African political lead-ers and former rebels, the need to improvethe flow of information between the vari-ous groups and also to refugees to allowthem to decide when and how they wouldbe willing to return home and to better co-ordinate the many humanitarian programsalready being undertaken to allow greaterflexibility and to eliminate duplication.

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Access to manyno-go areas out-side Freetownmust be secured,mission memberssaid. Involvedagencies must con-solidate refugee programs and prepareplans for the rapid return of refugees oncepolitical conditions warrant. They alsosuggested the creation of income gener-ating activities for former soliders and mi-cro-credit programs for refugees.

“Time is of the essence,” a mission re-port said, “and we must implement pro-

Take yourwounds to thepresident as awarning

Ms. S. was capturedby unknown gunmen inlate 1999 in the town ofSumaworia. At first therebels simply robbed thewoman of her bag andthen ordered her to staywith them, apparentlyfor sexual reasons. Whenshe argued vehementlyand said she would pre-fer to die rather than toremain, the youngest ofthe gunmen forced herinto a sitting position onthe ground.

She was ordered toput her foot on a stumpof wood. As the teenagerebel attempted to severher foot with a machete,she withdrew it quickly.The rebel drew the ma-chete across her throatand warned she wouldbe killed instantly if shedid not put her footdown.

She placed her leftfoot on the wood. Theyoung rebel severed twoof her toes. He handedthem to her and told herto give them to PresidentKabbah (of Sierra Leone)with a warning that thisis what could happen topeople who supportedthe government.

During the night therebels abandoned her.People hiding in a hutnearby helped her, wash-ing her foot and puttingsalt on the wound to stopit bleeding. She was car-ried in a hammock to anearby town where agroup of hunters lookedafter her for a month, un-til she was able to walk tosafety. B

grams as soon andas quickly as possi-ble, lest the mo-mentum begins toflag and we miss acrucial window ofopportunity.”

But whatever programs are put intoplace, and no matter how many interna-tional soldiers are present to enforce thepeace, as Zainab Bangura said, “The realtest will come when the guns are all fi-nally taken away and the gunmen go backto their communities to face their ownkin. We can only hope and pray.” B

“To look at them now, Iwouldn’t call themchildren anymore.”

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4When a rocket propelled grenade slammed into a UNHCR-sponsored bus in northern Kosovo on Feb. 2 killing two Serb

passengers, the incident ignited the worst inter-ethnic violence in theprovince since KFOR troops took control of the region. The incidentsparked prolonged clashes between Serb and Albanian communities inthe northern town of Mitrovica in which at least 11 persons were killedand dozens wounded. The UNHCR bus service, which was begun to tryto promote freedom of movement, was one of the casualties of thefighting. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic denounced the U.N.mission in Kosovo, while in the aftermath of the violence United Nationsspecial representative Bernard Kouchner urged the internationalcommunity to step up its assistance to the beleaguered province.

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1 The SecurityCouncil has

authorized a 5,500-member force tomonitor the shakycease-fire in theDemocratic Republicof the Congo. Theforce will comprise500 military observers

and 5,000 troops to protect them in a conflict which has drawnin five neighboring African countries and precipitated whatsome analysts have called Africa’s first ‘world war.’ Theresolution was drafted by the United States, whose U.N.ambassador Richard Holbrooke said, “The time has nowarrived to act.” The war has destabilized the entire region andproduced tens of thousands of new refugees.

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2More than 200,000persons have been

killed in a seeminglyunending war in thecentral African state ofBurundi. There are at least330,000 refugees inneighboring Tanzania andhundreds of thousands ofpersons like those picturedare displaced within thecountry. Africa’s mostvenerated leader, NelsonMandela has now assumed

the role of mediator to try to end the conflict. AfterMandela tongue lashed the various parties to thewar, some progress was reported in ongoing talks andthe government agreed to dismantle so-called‘regroupment camps’ where it had herded manycivilians, but there have been so many false starts inBurundi peace efforts in the past, there was noguarantee Mandela’s intervention would end the war.

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3 Sierra Leone has another chance to establishpeace after nearly a decade of appalling civil war

symbolized by the brutal mutilation of thousands of civil-ian victims. A fragile peace agreement between the gov-ernment and rebels was signed in July, 1999, and mem-bers of an 11,100-strong United Nations force have ar-rived in the west African state. Hundreds of thousands ofdisplaced persons are eager to return home – but only af-ter the majority of former rebels disarm in what, untilnow, has been a slow and laborious process.

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5UNHCR is expanding its operationsin Serbia to assist the largest

combined refugee and displacedpopulation in Europe. There are anestimated half million refugees from earlierconflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina andCroatia in the country and they were joinedby more than 200,000 ethnic Serbs andRoma who fled the fighting in the provinceof Kosovo in recent months. UNHCR hasbudgeted $71 million for the year 2000 tohelp these people and this will include theexpansion of integration projects to help

refugees who decide to stay in-country. However, there have been indications in recent months ofimproved cooperation between regional governments which could result in more longtimerefugees like those pictured returning home than in previous years.

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6When an Afghanairliner hijacked

during an internalflight eventuallylanded in Britain, theincident raised alarmbells not only in theUnited Kingdom butthroughout majorasylum-receivingcountries. Authoritiesbelieve the hijack wasdeliberately staged toallow the ringleaders andaccompanying families toescape Afghanistan—

where hundreds of thousands of people such as the womanpictured are displaced and an additional 2.6 million arerefugees in surrounding countries—and to seek asylum in afriendly country. Now, the authorities worry that ‘copy cat’hijackings could take place from other trouble spots.

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H O N G K O N G

7The Hong Kong government has agreed to allow the lastremaining 1,400 Vietnamese boat people in the territory to

settle there permanently. More than 200,000 Vietnamese transittedHong Kong since 1975, being resettled in third countries orreturned to Viet Nam. The last group of Vietnamese could not finda new country to go to and Viet Nam refused to accept them back soas a senior government official said, “The sooner we assimilatethese people to make them productive members of the Hong Kongcommunity, the better off we are.”

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Guinea is one of theworld’s poorest nationsbut hosts more refugeesthan any state in Africa

W hen Mensah Kpognon arrivedin the town of Macenta near theborder between the west

African states of Guinea and Liberia in thespring of 1999, his task appeared straight-forward enough. As the senior UNHCRofficial in the area, his orders were to helpcomplete the voluntary repatriation of120,000 Liberian refugees in the regionand then close down his office.

Instead, as fresh unrest broke out inLiberia, the border was closed, the returnprogram came to an abrupt halt and Kpognon found himself dealing witha fresh influx of fleeingLiberians.

Almost immediately “Wehad to shelter 8,000 newLiberian refugees at theDaro transit camp, whichhad been established ini-tially for repatriation,” he re-calls now. And rather thanclosing the office, as the newmillennium began Kpognonand his staff were transfer-ring these latest refugees 50kilometers deeper intoGuinea and away from thevolatile border region.

The abrupt change of di-rection which the Macenta field staff facedis symptomatic of one of the most chal-lenging and complex refugee problemsanywhere in the world.

Guinea sits at the epicenter of one ofAfrica’s most unstable regions. Two neigh-bors, Sierra Leone and Liberia, have beendevastated by war for years and hundreds

of thousands of civilians have spilled overinto surrounding countries seeking safety.

Although it is one of the world’s poorestcountries, Guinea took the bulk of them,and with an estimated 489,000 mainlySierra Leoneans and Liberians, hosts thelargest number of refugees of any state inAfrica.

“The presence of (so many) refugees isa heavy burden to bear for this very poorand forgotten country,” says ChristineMougne, UNHCR’s deputy Representativein Guinea, who went on to emphasize thatthe sheer number of refugees involved wasonly one of many headaches faced by thegovernment in Conakry and by humani-tarian organizations such as UNHCRworking in the region.

As a dirt poor state hosting so many dis-placed persons, Conakry is obviously aplace deserving international sympathy.But Guinea is not considered a ‘sexy’ oper-ation for many donors and receives com-paratively little assistance.

NO ONE WANTSTO KNOW

As Christine Mougne said,“Very few people want toknow what goes on here. Wehave a hard time financingour programs, and we con-stantly have to adjust ourneeds downwards.”

The government inConakry and the country’sseven million people have be-gun to question the presenceof so many foreigners, someof whom have been in thecountry for years. While

Guinea’s limited state resources are undermassive strain, large regions have been en-vironmentally degraded and the country’svery security put at risk by the presenceof so many refugees, what little aid is avail-able is channeled to the ‘visitors’ ratherthan being shared with equally deservinglocals, they insist.

By Corinne Perthuis

GUESTS IN A FORGOTTEN COUNTRY

It is one ofthe mostchallengingand complexrefugeeproblemsanywhere inthe world.

Refugees make mud bricks to build aschool at Forecariah.

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“It is essential to share assistance to ben-efit both refugees and the local population,”Interior Minister Zainoul Sanoussi, whosedepartment is responsible for refugee mat-ters, insisted in one recent interview.

The rapidly changing political and mil-itary situations in theneighboring refugee pro-ducing countries and thecomplexity of the needs ofspecific groups, makeslong-term humanitarianplanning not only ex-tremely challenging, butalmost impossible at times.

Explains ChristineMougne: “Right now weare offering special assis-tance to the victims of mu-tilations (from SierraLeone), and to vulnerablewomen and children.While we have suspendedaid to people who arrivedmore than two years ago,we are receiving newrefugees, especially in thewest and southeast of thecountry.”

As the disarmament offormer rebels continues inSierra Leone, the UNHCR office must pre-pare blueprints for the repatriation of370,000 refugees to that country, but in theinterim must still divert precious funds torelocate vulnerable refugee camps fromborder areas to safer locations inland.

“Naturally, new displacements weakenrefugees who have to start life all over againin a new camp, only to leave again for homea few months later,” she said. “But we have toensure their security” whatever the addi-tional cost and for however long it takes.

But such is the volatilityof the region, even whenUNHCR undertakes repa-triation programs, as in thecase of Mensah Kpognonmentioned above, these pro-jects sometime turn into renewed waves of refugees.

REFUGEE EPICENTERGuinea, Sierra Leone

and Liberia meet near thetown of Gueckedou in a re-gion known as “ForesterieGuinea” and in the lastdecade it has witnessed theebb and flow of hundredsof thousands of people onthe move. A national high-way runs parallel to theborder for more than 100kilometers and along itsentire length local villagesa n d r e f u g e e c a m p s have become interlaced.

Liberian civilians fleeing war in their coun-try were the first to arrive and then theSierra Leoneans, escaping similar atroci-ties in the west, followed.

The ‘old refugees’ who fled several yearsago are easy to spot. They have had time

Sierra Leonean refugee women fetch water at a camp near Gueckedou in Guinea.

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The rapidlychangingpolitical andmilitarysituation makeslong-termhumanitarianplanning notonly extremelychallenging,but almostimpossible attimes.

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to build solid mud houses. Further downthe highway new, white tents, house morerecent arrivals. Some refugees have become‘urbanized’ living in large centers such asConakry where they take menial jobs.

Though the Sierra Leone governmentand the country’s rebels signed a peaceagreement in July, 1999, (see cover story)there is an air of uncertainty amongrefugees—a reluctance to return home un-til everyone has been disarmed.

Some refugees employ their time use-fully. Seventeen-year-old Redempta es-

caped murderous guerrillas by walkingthrough the forest for one month but inGuinea “I’ve had the opportunity to con-tinue my studies. In (my home) village,I’m sure I would have had to stay home tohelp my mother. French classes aremandatory here, and I would like to speakthe language well before going backhome.”

Jim’s situation is more painful. Whilechildren play volleyball and football, he isin hiding with five other teenage boys ina hut far away from a leisure center at the

Sanadou 3 Camp. Jim is a former child sol-dier, one of the guerrillas responsible forone of the worst reigns of terror in recentAfrican history.

The rebels “made me do bad things, killthe Kamajors, our enemies,” he recalled.“If I didn’t do it, they would kill me. I sawsome of my friends killed. To keep us go-ing, they gave us valium, marijuana or‘gunpowder.’

But friends or relatives of some of Jim’svictims could be present in the camp andthe boys could literally be lynched if thesepeople recognize them as killers.

“They can suddenly become very vio-lent, or remain prostrate for hours on end,”says Michael Ngaojia, who supervisesthem. We hope to eventually find theirfamilies and relations, but most of themdo not even remember their mother’s face.And so many parents have been killed.”

As this article was being written,Liberia agreed to reopen its border withGuinea. That development, plus the peaceagreement in Sierra Leone raises hope forthe refugees…and for the Guineans whohave played host so patiently.

“We welcomed them because they areour brothers and our family,” said one se-nior police official in Gueckedou. “But likeall people who are close to us, with whomwe have much in common, we want themto be happy. And their happiness meansliving at home. They have already beenhere too long.” BUNHCR officials and refugees meet at a center near Forecariah, Guinea.

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Food supplies for refugees in Guinea’s Forecariah region.

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Refugees are finding a most unusualhome in a faraway place

W hen Nguyen Van Ho escaped hisnative South Viet Nam in 1979and reached his newly adopted

homeland, he was shocked. Staring acrossa treeless landscape of forbidding lavarocks, volcanoes and glaciers, his firstthought was, “I have escaped Viet Nam andgone to the moon.”

Two decades later, 37-year-old ZdravkoVranies arrived from the chaos of theBalkans and had a similar reaction. “Is thisMars?” he wondered.

Both refugees had,somewhat reluctantlyand to their own sur-prise, accepted sanctuaryin Iceland, a wedge ofbeautiful but harshf jords and mountainsstuck between northernEurope, Canada and the North Pole.Nguyen Van Ho had never even heard ofthe country until a visiting delegation tothe Malaysian camp in which he was living

asked if he would like to start a new life inIceland. Vranies had wanted to go toSwitzerland or Germany, but when thoseoptions were ruled out, he boarded an air-craft with his wife and two daughters andflew to the capital of Reykjavik in June,1998.

Iceland is one of the most unusual and lit-tle known of asylum countries anywhere inthe world. The majority of refugees, likeNguyen, have probably never heard of the

place and even among hu-manitarian workers thereis often astonishment:“Iceland? Refugees? Youmust be kidding.”

But since the Hun-garian Revolution in1956, it has been wel-coming small groups of

uprooted peoples. In 1979, 34 boat peoplewho had fled South Viet Nam, includingNguyen Van Ho, arrived to start a new life.A decade later another group of Viet-

By Ray Wilkinson

WHERE AM I?

A Kosovo couple in front oftheir new house.

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namese, this time mainly northerners whohad been living in camps in Hong Kong,came.

Iceland accepted Polish refugees dur-ing the 1980s as the seemingly monolithiccommunist bloc in central Europe beganto crumble and for three years starting in1996 groups of mainly mixed marriageSerbs from the Krajina region of Croatiawho had been driven out of their homesby the war in 1995, were accepted. In 1999,nearly 80 refugees from Kosovo have beenflown to Iceland.

MAJOR IMPACTThose numbers may seem small, but

the population of Iceland is only 275,000and on a per capita basis, the number ofKosovars accepted this year would be com-parable to an annual intake of more than70,000 refugees in the United States orsome 15,000 people in the United King-dom. The social and cultural impact onboth the refugees themselves and the ho-

Iceland is one ofthe most unusualasylum countriesin the world.

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mogeneous Icelanders has also probablybeen more pronounced than in other coun-tries.

Minister of Social Security Pall Peturs-son said his government planned to con-tinue taking in refugees in coming years.“We have a duty to invite refugees here,” hesaid in a recent interview with Refugees.“And we want to do a first class job in wel-coming and integrating them,” he said witha touch of pride which most Icelandersseem to share.

Iceland’s attitude towards its new arrivalsis not only “first class” but almost deluxecompared with other parts of the world.Many European countries, for instance, onlyaccepted Kosovar refugees on a temporarybasis. Legal and physical barriers to refugeeentry are going up virtually everywhere else.

“Once they arrive in Iceland, they canstay for the rest of their lives,” says Minis-ter Petursson. Refugees are provided withfree medical care, a generous financial

A Vietnamese refugee who arrived in 1979 with workcolleagues in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik.

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At work in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik.

erything from beds and freezers to chil-dren’s toys. Each refugee is given a oneyear course in the Icelandic language andchildren are encouraged to continue tostudy their native language and culture.Local ‘support families’ help the refugeeswith everything from shopping to reli-gious services to finding a job.

After five years, refugees can apply forcitizenship (curiously, they then must takeone Icelandic name. Nguyen Van Ho, whoworks as a mechanic with the Reykjavikcounty council, is now officially known asHalldor Nguyen).

SHOCK ON SIGHTCulture shock begins at first contact be-

tween refugees and Icelanders. One offi-cial remembers his initial exchange withrefugees. “I showed one man a map of Ice-land, surrounded only by the sea,” this of-ficial said. “He was very anxious to knowwhat the name of the nearest country was-

grant and apartments or small houseswhich are furnished by local communi-ties and the Icelandic Red Cross with ev-

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our children were nervous, wild. No disci-pline. No schooling for months. Even here,when they see a uniform they ask, ‘Arethese policemen going to kill someone?’But they are becoming happy again. Theyenjoy school. Even though we are Moslemswe sometimes go to the local church. No

problem. There is onlyone God.”

Food might be a prob-lem. A few years ago Ice-land was a severely insu-lar society where a visitormight be served such culi-nary delights as rottenshark and sheep’s head.

CULTURALAWAKENING

Today, thanks partlyto the influx of refugeesand a current economicboom, the country isblossoming culturally.

Until recently there was not a single for-eign restaurant. Now, in Reykjavik alone,there are around 10 Vietnamese-Chineseeating establishments started by refugees.“We are eating food we knew nothingabout 10 years ago,” says Minister PallPetursson. “They have helped change our

eating habits.”A Serbian exile has spent

nearly two years compilinga Serbo-Icelandic dictionarywhich will be publishedsoon.

To be sure, there areproblems in this northernparadise. Some ‘south’ and‘north’ Vietnamese, ene-mies during the In-dochina war, still eyeeach other warily. Ser-

bian refugees who arrived in the mid-1990s were ‘surprised and hurt’ whenIceland invited the Kosovars in 1999.

The Red Cross held emergency meet-ings to calm Serb fears that they hadsomehow been ‘betrayed’ by theiradopted country. “Iceland, afterall is a member of NATO andNATO was bombingKosovo,” a RedCross official said.“It was a veryuncomfort-able time forthe Serbs.”

Icelandic

authorities took no chances and made surethat most of the Kosovars were housed farfrom the Serbs. Still, as Minister PallPetursson now admits, “We were ratheranxious about the situation. But nothinghappened. It will pass.”

Some people worry, Icelanders andrefugees alike, that if the economic boomends and jobs become scarce, Iceland mightbecome less welcoming than it is today.

That is for the future, but for now 42-year-old Ismete Krasniqi and her four girlsand young son are wrestling with the kindof dilemma refugees around the world of-ten face. When Serbian security forcesraided her Kosovo village in early 1999, thisyear, mother and children were separatedfrom her husband. She eventually made itto Macedonia and Iceland and her husbandescaped into the mountains, but for a longtime each thought the others were dead.

“My life started again in Iceland,” Mrs.Krasniqi said in her neat one-storey homeon the outskirts of Dalvik. Her childrenare attending school and she would like to

stay. However, they recentlymade contact with her hus-

band again and he wants tostay in Kosovo.

“I don’t want to go back,”Mrs. Krasniqi said quietly.

But her 14-year-olddaughter, Sadete, had thelast word. “We want tolive here, but I want myfather more than Ice-land.” B

-east or west. Another man rememberedthat people in Iceland lived in snow houses.”

Vessel Veselaj, his wife and five chil-dren, had been herded aboard an infamous‘refugee train’ in Kosovo in early 1999 andfound himself languishing in a Macedo-nian refugee camp when he was ap-

proached by an Icelandic Red Cross dele-gation. He was reluctant to go to a placehe had never heard of before, but a frienddid an Internet search and told him, “Areyou crazy? Iceland is paradise comparedwith here.” Veselaj and his family werewaiting for the Red Cross team the nextday.

They eventually endedup in the northern Icelandictown of Dalvik, a place manypeople might consider beingon the very edge of theworld. Brooding hills, repre-senting an ever presentthreat of avalanches, towerabove the brightly paintedhomes where 2,300 peoplelive. Deep sea fishing boatsline the harbor. A deep fjordleads to the open sea. The next stop literallyis the North Pole. Rain squalls and viciouswinds lash the area for many days of the year.In summer there is almost permanent day-light and in winter virtual around-the-clocktwilight and darkness.

Some refugees have trouble adjustingto this hostile climate. One unlucky ar-rival who was attempting to repair a roofwas recently blown into the sea, alongwith the roof. He survived.

Vessel Veselaj appears undaunted as hechats in his blue, two-storey, three-bed-roomed house on the edge of Dalvik town.“Icelanders are a happy people, even in thisdarkness. Why not us,” he says. “In Kosovo

Iceland’s parliament building in downtown Reykjavik.

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Culture shockbegins at firstcontactbetweenrefugees andIcelanders.

A churchin Iceland’scapital.

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24 R E F U G E E S

Being accepted by oldneighbors may be evenmore difficult

A lberto sat patiently at a child’sschool desk in the headquarters ofDili’s new civilian police, waiting

to quiz an alleged militia member. The sus-pect’s tale had become a familiar one as tensof thousands of East Timorese who hadfled or been forcibly evicted from theirhomes in the chaotic weeks following theterritory’s vote for independence in 1999,continued to straggle back. As the suspectmade his way through a local neighbor-hood on his first day back he was ‘recog-

nized’ as one of the militias who hadwreaked terror on the capital and was severely beaten before the police couldintervene.

Now Alberto, a protection assistant withUNHCR, had been called in to help decidethe truth and what to do next. But whenLuis Suares was led into the room Albertobroke into a smile. “This one is going to beeasy,” he recalled. “I knew this man. He wasnot in the militia.”

Suares, the suspect, described how fourmen had knocked at the door of his homeonly moments after he, his father and sister had returned. Spurning the offer ofcoffee, the visitors instead punched andkicked him and insisted his cousins hadbeen militia members and probably responsible for many of the killings in Dili,the East Timor capital.

Once Luis Suares account was con-

firmed, Alberto’s next task was moretricky—trying to reintegrate him into abadly traumatized society by acting as aneffective honest broker between the re-turning refugee and a hugely suspiciouslocal community.

While the original mass exodus, thesubsequent killings and destruction andthen the start of the refugees return, re-ceived the bulk of the world’s attention,this kind of work has gone largely unher-alded. It is often painstakingly slow, labor

East Timorese arriving home in Dili.

UNHCR construction materials tohelp rebuild East Timor.

By Paul Stromberg

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GOING HOME IS ONLYPART OF THE STORY

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intensive, expensive and low-key, but isnevertheless part of the organization’s ‘core’mandate of providing legal and physicalprotection for the vulnerable and UNHCRhas intervened in dozens of similar casesin Timor.

NO DANGERAlberto’s first move is to assure mem-

bers of the U.N. mandated police force,commonly known as ‘civpol’, that LuisSuares poses no danger to the community.He then must track down the leader of thezone where Suares lives and a representa-tive of the territory’s fledgling local ad-ministration, known by its Portugueseacronym CNRT, to enlist their help in rein-tegrating this latest returnee and other sus-pected or real members of the old militias.

“More former militia members are ac-cepting the calls they have heard from lead-ers like Xanana Gusmao and are cominghome to East Timor,” says Cristina Planas,UNHCR’s senior protection officer in Dili.But they face a difficult and potentially hos-tile environment.

East Timor’s national justice system isstill in a planning stage and the territorydoes not have the capacity to detain, in-vestigate or prosecute alleged killers andcriminals. There is deep and simmeringresentment among a civilian populationwhich was so deeply traumatized so re-cently.

“One day a man who villagers may haveseen last setting fire to their homes, climbsout of a truck with other returnees,” saysCristina Planas. “It is easy to understandthe villagers reaction.” But, she adds, ”Rightnow, no matter what someone is suspectedof, there is no other place for them to go.”

The dilemma fac-ing UNHCR protec-tion and local officialsis to try to find a bal-ance between all ofthese conflictingproblems and emo-tions. “We must findan acceptable way tomove people backhome and to ensurethat returnees’ rightsare respected,”Cristina Planas said,while at the sametime being sensitiveto the pent-up angerof so many civilians.

A case such as

Luis Suares points to the dangers of rush-ing to judgement, these officials tell peo-ple over and over again in meetings heldin living rooms and communal hallsthroughout Dili and other centers. Theremust be no popular revenge. Instead, as Al-berto will do with Luis,he patiently and labori-ously tries to elicitpledges from neighborsthat the returnee will beprotected.

PROTECTING PEOPLE,NOT CRIME

“We preach patience,”says local attorney Anto-nio Goncalves. “We makeit clear we are protectingpeople, not crimes.”Goncalves is an unlikelyconciliator. He was im-prisoned by Indonesianauthorities in 1986 for in-dependence activities butwas eventually able to finish his studies inexile and joined a team of lawyers repre-senting jailed Timorese leader XananaGusmao in 1997. He returned to Timor inlate December.

“It is not strange to help people othersmight consider criminals,” he said shortlyafter asking Australian peacekeepers to in-tervene on behalf of three ‘suspect’ re-turnees in his own neighborhood. “It is nor-mal work to reintegrate all East Timoresein order to rebuild Timor.”

This work involves talking patiently to

former neighbors about specific cases, so-liciting local opinions on the possible re-turn of a particular person and gauging po-tential opposition. These meetings in turnprovide Timorese with an opportunity toair their own worries about the return of

former militia.Some town meetings

draw hundreds of people,but the proceedings aregenerally orderly. At onerecent gathering, a local of-ficial tells the meeting thatthe international commu-nity must protect all Tim-orese including one partic-ular person who has notbeen allowed to return tothis zone after he repatri-ated. Zone leader GeorgeClaudio adds his support,telling locals that by pre-venting the suspect’s re-turn they are stooping tothe level of the militias.

To no avail. The meeting breaks upwithout agreement. UNHCR and local of-ficials will try again in a few days, but theyhave already begun looking for other ar-eas which might accept the man.

Meanwhile, Luis Suares has gonehome. He sits on his front porch withlocal leaders and key neighbors whileUNHCR’s Alberto explains the purposeof the meeting. Everyone has a chanceto speak. Eventually they all nod theirassent. Luis has been accepted backhome. B

UNHCR staff begin mediation efforts to reintegrate a returnee back into civil society.

The work isslow, laborintensive,expensive andlow-key, but ispart ofUNHCR’s coremandate ofprotection.

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An independentevaluation of the Kosovocrisis gives the agencymixed marks

T he 1999 Kosovo crisis was probablythe most complex emergency inUNHCR’s nearly 50 year history.

Within 11 weeks, nearly one million peo-ple fled the embattled province and just assuddenly returned home. The agency hadnever faced such a rapid whiplash of move-ment—exodus and repatriation—of so manypeople in such short a time. The humani-tarian aspects of the emergency, over-whelming as they were, were neverthelessdwarfed by political and military consid-erations involvingthe national inter-ests of the world’sleading powers, regional organiza-t i o n s a n d t h e involvement ofNATO in its firstshooting war.

UNHCR re-cently released the results of an indepen-dent report it had commissioned to assessthe lessons of this unique crisis. The 141-page document confirmed early criticismsthat the agency had performed poorly insome areas of the emergency—respondingslowly to the developing crisis, having in-adequate emergency supplies in place anddeploying senior staff too slowly. The re-port, however, judged the agency’s perfor-mance within the unique overall contextof the time and concluded that “many fac-tors affecting UNHCR’s performance werenot under its own control” and that in judg-ing such areas as coordinating other agen-cies, protecting and registering refugeesand the supply of aid itself, critics had ig-

nored or underestimated thecomplexity of such issues. Inthe final analysis, the reportsaid, the major powers viewedthe fate of the refugees in thisparticular crisis as too impor-tant to their own national interests to leave them to UNHCR alone.

The agency accepted themajority of the findings andsaid it was already working onmethods to strengthen its strategic plan-ning, leadership capacity and ability to re-spond more quickly to major emergencies.

Within the overall context of the Kosovocrisis, it is also important to note that UN-HCR worked effectively to help hundredsof thousands of Kosovars, both before thelaunch of the NATO airstrikes and after

the refugees returnedto Kosovo (the evalu-ation covered only theactual period of war)and that even duringthe bombing cam-paign the refugeeshad received ade-quate assistance andmortality rates were

actually below other, similar emergencies.The following questions and answers

address some of the ma-jor issues. The answersare direct extracts eitherfrom the report itself orfrom UNHCR’s response.

Q. Why is it impor-tant to put UNHCR’sperformance in contextof the overall crisis?

A. In political terms,the emergency was a rareevent in contemporaryinternational relations. Itinvolved the national in-

terests of major powers, strong regional or-ganizations and military action in Europe.In this situation, the displacement issuebecame an important element in the diplo-macy of war. As a result, many factors af-fecting UNHCR’s performance were notunder its own control.

Q. What was the result of the politicizednature of the emergency?

A. It brought enormous resources to theemergency, but relatively little of it waschannelled through UNHCR and consul-tation with UNHCR varied considerably.The top six European Union contributorsallocated $279 million in humanitarian as-sistance… but UNHCR received only 3.5percent of this directly.

Q. What differences emerged between

The refugees weretoo important toleave to UNHCR

Refugees at Stankovec 2 camp in Macedonia in April, 1999.

Canned food is distributed to refugees arriving inKukes, Albania, in April, 1999.

The agency isstrengthening itsstrategic planning andleadership capacity...

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UNHCR and other actors?A. The most important difference in

perspective concerned the first asylum is-sue in FYR Macedonia. UNHCR vigor-ously defended unconditional first asylum(a person’s right to seek asylum in the firstcountry he/she reached). The UnitedStates and United Kingdom were more at-tuned to destabilization concerns in Mace-donia and worried the refugee presencewould make the government withdraw itssupport for NATO’s military campaign.

Q. Did UNHCR meet expectations?A. The political and refugee challenges

left UNHCR with a daunting task and lim-ited room to manoeuvre. A persistent gapbetween expectations and reality fuelledcriticism that the agency failed to meet objectives.

Q. What were the external and internal constraints on UNHCR?

A. Externally, these included donors ex-tensively bypassing UNHCR to fund op-erations directly; significant blurring ofhumanitarian and military-political mis-sions; the powerful role and agenda ofNATO in the humanitarian sector; reluc-tant government hosts; complex institu-tional rivalries and the emergency’s highvisibility. Internally they included, limited‘surge’ capacity of staff and other resourcesfor emergencies, inappropriate decisionmaking structures, limited financial andhuman resources, recent restructuring and

underestimation of the special require-ments of a high profile emergency.

Q. Should UNHCR have anticipatedthe crisis?

A. UNHCR did not anticipate the sizeand speed of the exodus, nor could it rea-sonably be expected to have done so. Noaid agency has subsequently claimed it an-ticipated this kind of outflow.

Q. Did UNHCR meet its own assis-tance standards?

A. The levels of UNHCR’s emergencystockpiles were below the agreed target of250,000 persons and the decision to dis-patch emergency response teams was nottaken soon enough. (However) therefugees generally received adequate assistance and mortality rates were wellbelow the generally accepted thresholdfor emergencies and there were no serious epidemics.

Q. How can UNHCR’s assistance be improved?

A. It could improve supply capacity tomeet existing standards; use its own re-sources to encourage other actors to allo-cate their own capabilities and either co-ordinate more fully or del-egate activities whenappropriate to other ac-tors such as the WorldFood Program. Theagency should also de-velop ‘standby’ agree-ments and other ‘service’packages with govern-ments and organizations.

Q. What were man-power deployment prob-lems?

A. Staff deploymentwas generally slow, criti-cal mid-level manage-ment for field operationswas lacking and some keyfield positions were not staffed. The agencyhad an insufficient number of high-levelstaff to address critical diplomatic chal-lenges.

Q. Did UNHCR fulfil its coordinationrole?

A. Weakness in staff deployment re-duced the effectiveness of UNHCR’s coor-dination role. At the same time, the dom-inance of bilateralism and the presence of

numerous actors made system-wide coor-dination extraordinarily difficult. UNHCRwas the accepted, rather than the formallydesignated, lead agency and it could onlycoordinate those (among an estimated 250non-governmental organizations and gov-ernments) willing to be coordinated.

Q. How did UNHCR perform its pro-tection role?

A. UNHCR invested considerable ef-fort to provide international protection ina difficult context. The outflow presentedthe agency with particular pressures ex-ercised by key donor states whose inter-ests were tied to the NATO military cam-paign and not necessarily to universal stan-dards of protection. Some donors criticizedthe agency for not being sufficiently sen-sitive to the destabilization concerns ofMacedonia. Some human rights groupscriticized the agency for not puttingenough pressure on the government (onbehalf of refugees). UNHCR performed aswell as the situation permitted.

Q. How did UNHCR perform on reg-istration of refugees?

A. The pressure to register refugeesstemmed from concerns that differ from

normal operations; it fo-cused on family tracingand issues related to denialof nationality rather thanthe provision of assistance.This led to unrealistic de-mands from donors, andUNHCR could not rea-sonably have been ex-pected to complete a fullregistration in the 11 weeksthe emergency lasted. UN-HCR’s registration policy,however, should be modi-fied and technological ad-vances experimented withduring Kosovo could con-tribute to protection activ-ities if refined.

Q. Why did UNHCR work with themilitary in Kosovo?

A. Although UNHCR’s status as a non-political humanitarian organization wouldseem to preclude close cooperation with amilitary, in Kosovo it was widely acceptedas necessary to save lives. Cooperation hasbeen similarly accepted when militaryforces were involved in U.N.-authorizedpeace enforcement operations. B

A NATO center for newarrivals in Macedonia.

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B BELGRADE: Infamous Serbianparamilitary leader ‘Arkan’ wasgunned down in a Belgrade hotel.

B TIMOR: Some 150,000 refugeeshave returned to East Timor butmilitiamen continued to hamperrepatriation.

S H O R T T A K E S

Seeking asylum

One of Africa’s most venerated leaders,the late President Julius Nyerere ofTanzania, tried without much success

to broker some progress in one of the conti-nent’s most intractable crises. Now, another dis-tinguished leader, former South African Presi-dent Nelson Mandela has assumed the role ofmediator to try to end the conflict in the tinycentral African state of Burundi where morethan 200,000 people have been killed in a seem-ingly never ending civil war. Mandela, a NobelPeace Prize winner, South Africa’s first demo-cratically elected president and perhaps the

most revered of any world statesman to-day, began his task with a verbal broad-side against the government leaders, sol-diers and rebels of the tiny country of sixmillion people. “Why do you allow your-selves to be regarded as leaders withouttalent, leaders without vision?” he de-manded in his first meeting with them.“When people in the West hear thesethings (of the ongoing atrocities) they say‘Africans are still barbarians. No humanbeing could do what they are doing. Pleasejoin the modern world.’”Burundi has been wracked for decades byon-again off-again wars between the ma-jority Hutu people and the minority Tutsis

who, nevertheless, have dominated the countrysince independence from Belgium in 1962. As thewar intensified in recent months, the govern-ment herded an estimated 350,000 civilians into‘regroupment camps’ to allow the army to moreeasily pursue Hutu rebels—a ploy it has tried un-successfully in the past. Under pressure fromMandela and the U.N. Security Council, Burundiagreed to start dismantling these camps, but ameaningful negotiated breakthrough whichwould allow hundreds of thousands of displacedBurundians, and 330,000 refugees in Tanzania,to return home still appears a long way away. B

Former South African President Nelson Mandela,pictured with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, isthe new Burundi mediator.

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The U.N. Security Councilapproved a six-month renewaluntil the end of July to the 101-member U.N. Observer Mis-sion in Georgia which, togeth-er with Russian and other con-tingents has been helping tokeep the peace between thegovernment and the break-away Abkhazia region(REFUGEES magazine, N° 117).More than 250,000 ethnicGeorgians fled the Abkhaziaregion during the 1992-93 civilwar and there have been peri-odic outbursts of renewedfighting there and in otherparts of the former Soviet Re-public during the 1990s.

U G A N DA

A December 1999 agreement between Sudanand Uganda seeking to endyears of conflict along theircommon border has begun topay modest dividends. Agroup of 21 Ugandans whowere kidnapped by the so-called Lord’s Resistance Armywhich has terrorized northand central Uganda for adecade recently returnedhome. Another 54 peoplewere handed over to U.N. au-thorities in Khartoum. TheLRA has seized as many as10,000 young people in re-cent years.

B OS N I A

Five Bosnian Croats have been found guilty ofcrimes against humanity bythe United Nations tribunalfor former Yugoslavia. Theywere sentenced to prisonterms ranging from six to 25years in connection with themassacre of an estimated 100Muslim villagers in the villageof Ahmici in 1993 when gangsof Croats overran the area andkilled everyone in sight. Thedefendants were arrested byBritish soldiers and went ontrial in August 1998. A sixth de-fendant was acquitted.

B U R U N D I

Another peace effort for Burundi

E U RO P E

Asylum claims in Europe jump in 1999

The number of peopleseeking asylum in Eu-rope in 1999 rose to

437,400, an increase of 19 per-cent compared with the previ-ous year. Germany continuedto receive the largest overallnumber of applications, a totalof 95,300 followed by the Unit-ed Kingdom with 91,400 andSwitzerland with 46,100.Compared to a country’s pop-ulation size, Liechtensteincame out on top, receiving 16.3asylum seekers per 1,000 in-habitants followed by Luxem-

bourg, 6.8 and Switzerland 6.5.Portugal received the lowestnumber of asylum seekerscompared with its total popu-lation at 0.03 percent, less thanone third the European aver-age. Slovakia experienced thelargest increase in the num-ber of applicants last year, thefigure rising by 155 percentfollowed by Liechtenstein, 126percent and Finland with anincrease of 122 percent. Thenumber of people seekingrefuge in the Netherlands andSweden dropped by 13 percent

in 1999 and the overall Ger-man figure, while still thehighest in Europe, decreasedby three percent comparedwith the previous year. Inter-estingly, a separate U.N. reportsuggests that Europe willneed 160 million immigrantworkers by the year 2025 tosupport a rapidly ageing pop-ulation which is set to declineby five million in the nextquarter century. The ratio ofworkers to non-workers wasalso set to halve in the sameperiod. B

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C H I N A

UNHCR has condemnedChina for deporting sevenNorth Koreans who theagency had recognized asrefugees back to their homecountry. The North Koreans,ranging from 13 to 30 yearsold, entered China to seekfood. They were subsequentlycaught by Russian guardswhile crossing the borderfrom China and were recog-nized as having refugee status.However, they were returnedto China which in turn sentthem back to North Koreasaying it viewed the seven nodifferently than thousands ofother North Koreans whohave crossed the bordersearching for food.

B E LG I U M

Belgium recently offeredpeople residing illegally inthe country—the so-called‘sans papiers’, a one time op-portunity to regularize theirresidency. Between 35,000-40,000 applications were re-ceived and will be examinedby panels consisting of alawyer, magistrate and a non-governmental organization.Applicants include personswho had requested refugeestatus in recent years withoutreceiving a final decision, per-sons who can demonstratehumanitarian reasons to stay,who are seriously ill or whocannot return to their formercountries of residence or na-tionality for reasons beyondtheir control.

B U.N. The U.N. raised $1.47 billion towards its $2.2 billion target for relief aid in 1999 withthe U.S., European Union andJapan the largest donors.

Seeking asylum

B TIMOR: A quarter of EastTimorese refugee children sufferfrom acute malnutrition.

B NEW ZEALAND: The govern-ment said it will ban all HIV-posi-tive immigrants, includingrefugees, starting July 1.

B TIMOR: United Nationspeacekeepers have taken overresponsibility for security in EastTimor from the Australian-ledmultinational force (INTERFET).

E R I T R E A

A fresh start in Eritrea

UNHCR has restarted operations in theeast African state of Eritrea after an ab-sence of nearly three years. The agency

was expelled from the country in May, 1997 overwhat the Eritreans saw as its ‘undue insistence’ onthe return of Eritrean refugees from eastern Su-dan. Relations between those two countries im-

proved recently and Eritrea opened an embassyin Khartoum in January after a six-year-longbreak in ties. That helped pave the way for UN-HCR’s return to the region where it hopes to drawup plans to repatriate nearly 150,000 Eritreanswho fled to Sudan, some as long as a quarter cen-tury ago. B

There may be a glimmerof hope at the end of thetunnel for hundreds of

thousands of civilians who fledCroatia during the 1991-95 warin former Yugoslavia. Follow-ing the recent death of Presi-dent Franjo Tudjman, the coun-try’s new government said itwants to move quickly to intro-duce sweeping democratic re-forms… and allow refugees andinternally displaced persons toreturn to their old homes. Inone encouraging sign, during

recent parliamentary and pres-idential campaigns, the issuewas treated as a humanitarianand social problem rather thanthe highly sensitive politicalone it was during the Tudjmanera. “I am ready to make ges-tures that will help end collec-tive accusations (of the Serb mi-nority) even if no such gesturescome from their side,” Presi-dent-elect Stipe Mesic said inone interview. The new author-ities have said all refugees,whether from Croatia itself or

from Bosnia-Herzegovina,have the right to return. Theyhave also told UNHCR that cer-tain discriminatory laws whichhave effectively blocked the re-turn of civilians will be ex-punged. Croatia has paid lip ser-vice to the return of refugees inthe past, and although 112,000have gone home, including36,000 Croatian Serbs from theFederal Republic of Yugoslavia,an estimated 280,000 are stillin that country and neighbor-ing Bosnia. B

A new beginning? Croatian Serbs who fled the Krajina region in 1995 could soon return.

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A new start for Croatia’s refugees?

Mobile Microsoft registration kits inDakar, Senegal

A s hundreds of thousands of refugeespoured out of Kosovo in early 1999

one of the most distressing aspects oftheir plight was the attempt by Serbianauthorities to strip many of them of anyform of identification – effectively tryingto make them ‘non persons’. UNHCRregisters refugees—but only after theyhave settled in a camp or a reception cen-ter and normally to allow them to receiveemergency aid such as food. The scaleand speed of the Kosovo exodus and the

need to give back to the refugees an iden-tity was obviously a problem of a fargreater dimension than in a ‘normal’refugee crisis. Microsoft, aided by indus-try partners such as Hewlett-Packard,Compaq, Securit and ScreenCheck—de-veloped from scratch a so-called registra-tion field kit including computers, digi-tal cameras, signature pads, special IDcard printers and related hardware andsoftware. The majority of refugees re-turned home before the revolutionary

kits could be fully deployed, but f ieldtests have continued since then with up-graded software. UNHCR has been pro-vided with 100 of the 40 kilogram,$20,000 portable kits, accompanied bytheir own generators and recently de-ployed several of them to the westAfrican state of Senegal to help registra-tion there. Says UNHCR informationsystems analyst Ioli Kimyaci who workedin Senegal, “Normally the refugees haveto come to us for registration. It is a timeconsuming and inefficient process. Nowwe can go directly to the refugees. It takes10 minutes to set up the system and beginwork. It’s very easy to use.” In addition tothe kits themselves, Microsoft will con-tinue to support the program by provid-ing backup personnel and technical ad-vice. In an assessment of its Kosovoperformance, UNHCR recognized that itneeded to strengthen its registration pro-cedures. The mobile kits will go a longway towards reaching that goal. B

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N orway’s three-time Olympicspeed skating gold medal win-

ner Dr. Johann Koss has established ahumanitarian fund raising groupcalled Olympic Aid to coincide withthe September games in Sydney. Theorganization hopes to raise at leastfive million Australian dollars fromthe public and industry. The bulk ofthe donations will be channeled

through UNHCR to refugee childrenprojects in education, health andsport. Some of the funds will helppromote an ‘Olympic Sports Day’ in12 refugee camps around the world inJune where youngsters will play a se-ries of events including soccer, vol-leyball, netball running and jump-ing. Australian disadvantagedchildren will benefit from the localpart of the Olympic Aid project runby Australian tennis stars Pat Rafterand Evonne Goolagong. B

Goodwill ambassador

One of the Arab world’s most famousshowbiz personalities, Egyptian co-

median Adel Imam, has become a good-will ambassador for UNHCR in the Mid-dle East and North Africa. Imam, who isin his 60s and whose latest film, HelloAmerica, was a hit, will combine his act-ing career and his new duties. “As good-will ambassador I will try to accomplishthree main missions,” he said. “They in-clude visiting refugee areas worldwide,fund raising and developing artistic pro-jects to benefit refugees.” B

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Technology transfer

Microsoft’s Bill Gates and High Commissioner Sadako Ogata at the recent Davoseconomic summit meeting.

Sports aid

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“Can we speak of any sub-stantive reconstruction pro-gram, like those generouslyfunded by governments inKosovo or East Timor, in anyAfrican country.”U.N. High Commissioner forRefugees Sadako Ogata on theworld’s ambivalence toward long-term aid for Africa.

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“I asked for funds. All wehave to date are pledges, butnot a single dollar.”

Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, Com-mander of NATO forces inKosovo on efforts to raise $120million to pay civil servants inthe province.

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“The whole town is likeCoventry, or Warsaw orStalingrad, there’s nothingworse.”A Chechen civilian comparingthe destruction of his capital,Grozny, with other cities de-stroyed in World War II.

“Look at what happened inBosnia in five years andthen see what has hap-pened in Kosovo in fivemonths, and please stopthe preaching. Never has aU.N. mission gone so fast.”U.N. Kosovo administratorBernard Kouchner answeringcharges the U.N. was not mov-ing fast enough in the province.

FFF

“The children don’t cry any-more. That is the scariest

part. I think our childrenhave forgotten how to cry.”A Chechen nurse describing the de-struction ofher region and its people.

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“When they hear (about thekillings) people say ‘Afri-cans are still barbarians –no human beings could dowhat they are doing. Pleasejoin the modern world.’”Former South African PresidentNelson Mandela, in his new ca-pacity as a mediator for the con-flict in Burundi, appealing to thevarious factions to make peace.

FFF

“We are all against terror-ism… but the force usedagainst them must be pro-portionate. We must bevery careful to avoid a sit-uation in which violence isvisited on civilians.”U.N. Secretary-General KofiAnnan on the role of the Russianmilitary in Chechnya.

FFF

“The misery of the Burundipeople affects us all anddiminishes the humanityof all of us.”Former South African PresidentNelson Mandela as he took up anew role as mediator to try to haltthe fighting in Burundi.

FFF

“The forces of disintegra-tion are substantiallystronger than the forces ofintegration.”Carl Bildt, former High Repre-sentative in Bosnia, on the situ-ation in Kosovo.

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“Serbs here feel the same asthe Jews in Auschwitz.”A Serb leader in the Kosovo townof Mitrovica following recentethnic clashes.

“What is a refugee? They don’t care.They are all homeless” yet “two-thirdsof the homeless people in the world areclassified with the odious acronym ofinternally displaced persons.”America’s U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke during a U.N. debate on the difference between the two groups.

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