Agencies resume work.

• Author: Grabish, Beatrice
• Position: Peacewatch - UN agencies in Sierra Leone

Soon after ECOMOG gained control of Freetown, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in collaboration with Sierra Leone's Embassy in Conakry, Guinea, arranged bus transportation for more than 6,000 of the 20,000 Sierra Leonean civil servants who had escaped to Guinea in May 1997. They returned just days following the end of hostilities. Additional funds are being sought in order to help the last group to return. On the other hand, as fighting continued in the east of the country, thousands of new refugees poured into Liberia. In recent weeks, the influx of refugees into the border towns in Guinea was assuming "alarming proportions" and they were in poor physical shape, according to UNHCR. The increase in refugees was adding to the hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leonean refugees already being hosted by those countries.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) also restarted its activities in Sierra Leone. Among other programmes, it was working with the Ministry of Health on mass immunization in the capital and, as soon as it was feasible, in other provincial towns. It was also assisting in supplying drugs to the hospitals. On 25 March, UNICEF organized a workshop to sensitive ECOMOG forces, government officials and representatives of civil defence units on the need to protect child combatants of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), as they surrendered. UNICEF estimated that for the next three...