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First Assessment Team Finds Huge Needs in Diamond-Rich Kono District
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2001
FREETOWN, 16 June 2001: A World Vision team returned from Kono District this week after an initial assessment of people’s critical needs in the diamond-rich area of Sierra Leone controlled by rebels of the RUF (Revolutionary United Front).
World Vision is the first humanitarian agency to return to Kono District since the area became inaccessible in 1998, when the RUF gained control of Kono’s diamond fields. Since then, the RUF has been using revenue from illicit gem smuggling to finance its armed movement that currently controls more than half of the country.
Up to 80 percent of Kono’s pre-war population (estimated at 510,000) fled the intense, sporadic fighting over control of this district, the country’s former breadbasket and site of some of the world’s most lucrative alluvial mining.
World Vision’s assessment team reports that tens of thousands of people have recently returned to Kono District, with more and more returning each day. People are returning from refugee camps in Guinea, forced to flee by fighting close to the border; and from within Sierra Leone, encouraged to return home by the continuing disarmament of RUF and rival pro-government Civil Defense Force (CDF) fighters.
The nine-member World Vision team, including health, agriculture, commodities and child specialists, met with recent returnees in seven of Kono District’s 14 chiefdoms, in both RUF- and CDF-controlled areas. They also met with RUF head General Issa Sesay, who spoke of the readiness of the RUF to disarm and work for peace.
The team reports that a decade of fighting has left around 90 percent of buildings—including homes, schools, health clinics—damaged or destroyed. This is particularly evident in Koidu, the district’s head town, formerly described as a town of workaholics intent on getting rich from diamond mining.
Healthcare and schooling are practically non-existent in Kono now, and people are surviving on a diet of bananas and wild yams. Farmers have no rice seeds to plant, and time is running out for the planting season.
Assuming the disarmament process continues, World Vision is set for an immediate response to people’s urgent needs in Kono District. The response will focus on providing food for the most vulnerable; shelter, health centres and schools; essential medical supplies and personnel; and seeds for farmers to plant before the rainy season advances.
“If the disarmament of the RUF and Kamajors (pro-government CDF) happens in Kono at the end of June as planned, people will really start to come back here,” said World Vision assessment team leader Eddie Brown, “especially if they know they can get seed in the ground before the full rains come.”
International aid agency World Vision began working in Sierra Leone in 1996 as an emergency response to critical human needs following years of civil war. The agency has continued with longer-term development in areas unaffected by fighting. Recent activities include: distributing food to around 25,000 internally displaced people in the north and 600 returnees in the south; providing agricultural tools such as hoes and cutlasses to 1000 farming groups in the south; providing ongoing support to 14 health clinics; and operating a youth reintegration, training and education for peace scheme that has so far reached almost 30,000 ex-combatants and war-affected youth.
World Vision Sierra Leone has been the only international NGO operating in Kono since 1996.
CONTACTS: mediainfo@worldvision.org
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