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UNICEF hopes a window is opening in Sierra Leone

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said she has been encouraged by the consistent and apparently growing flow of children who have been released to the children's agency by rebel forces. "Last week, there were two releases of 31 and 20 abducted children," she said, "including a one-month-old baby and the baby's mother. Just last month, 34 children were released through the auspices of ECOMOG. We have reason to hope that more children will be freed in the future."

The recent releases give some indication of how concern for children can bring unlikely groups together. The handing-over of the 20 children to United Nations workers last Friday, which took place on a road east of Freetown, followed an unusual meeting which included rebel officers, representatives of Government-supported ECOMOG peace-keeping forces and representatives of an inter-religious group. As with previous releases, the children transferred on Friday were given in to the care of UNICEF-Sierra Leone for return to their families.

During much of the conflict in Sierra Leone, there has been an almost total disregard of international conventions designed to protect civilians, women and children in particular, from the horrors of war. The United Nations Secretary-General's most recent report on the U.N. Observer Mission in Sierra Leone again chronicled the extent of the depravity.

Ms. Bellamy expressed hope that a changed environment might lead to increased access to presently closed areas of the country so that humanitarian assistance might be delivered and, at the same time, called for the release of even more children from the areas affected by the conflict.

"Increasing confidence creates the stage for more direct access to women and children caught behind frontlines," Ms. Bellamy added. "We desperately need safe corridors. Over 600 new cases of measles have been recorded in Kenema, Bo and other communities. This is also the cholera season and already there are several hundred reported cases of the diarrhoea which often precedes cholera outbreaks."

Despite ongoing dangers, Ms. Bellamy said that UNICEF has been able to continue to operate within Sierra Leone and has provided humanitarian assistance where possible. The agency has distributed vaccines, basic medical supplies, safe water and nutritional supplies wherever it has been given access to populations and, as well, has participated in interim-care programmes for dislocated children and for those children released by the security forces.

Ms. Bellamy said that UNICEF is developing programmes to provide emergency schooling for internally displaced persons and other vulnerable children, along with psychosocial support for teachers and pupils. Special emphasis will be placed on counseling girls who have been raped and on social reintegration of children associated with the fighting forces.

Thus far in 1999 some 92 children have been returned through a network developed and supported by UNICEF. The children's agency has coordinated with ECOMOG to receive the children and provided funds and supplies to various partners -- including religious groups and local and international NGOs -- for health care, housing, counseling and tracing services.

"It may be a pipe dream to believe that peace could be a reality in Sierra Leone, after the unspeakable violence we have seen there," Ms. Bellamy said. "But the alternative would be a further descent into anarchy and the worst forms of violence and terror. The children and women of the country deserve an end to the carnage, and a chance to begin to recreate lives that have been shattered by the long years of conflict." She asserted that with the strength of ECOMOG and the support of the U.N., voices of reason may yet prevail in Sierra Leone, and the possibility of peace may, for the first time in months, be in prospect.

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