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Updated 11 May 2000

Update

Despite the latest outbreak of violence in Sierra Leone, UNICEF continues to operate in the West African nation, helping its children escape -- and recover -- from nearly a decade of civil war. These efforts are vital for a country that has some of the most difficult living conditions in the world. UNICEF's aim has been to help provide children with the basic services guaranteed to them by the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- including the right to a quality education, good healthcare, and basic protection. Without these, Sierra Leone's children are not only denied their rights, they are deprived of the chance to develop to their fullest potential.

Photo: A six-year-old girl sits with her mother at the Waterloo camp for displaced persons, near Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in 1998. Both mother and daughter lost their left hands to rebels' machetes during an attack six months earlier in the village of Konibaya, near the northern district of Kabala. It took them three days to receive medical attention following the attack. Children account for half of all those killed during the conflict, and of the estimated 20 per cent of the population disabled by the fighting, the majority are children.

The forgotten generation

Already Sierra Leone is witnessing the emergence of a Forgotten Generation -- children who have begun to accept displacement, war and lack of basic services as a normal part of their lives. The current round of fighting and insecurity reinforces such hopelessness. Moreover, a return to the recruitment of child soldiers is possible, despite international efforts to abolish this practice. A major concern for UNICEF right now is the safety of nearly 1,700 former child soldiers, 900 of whom are housed in interim care centres.

Sierra Leone Country Statistics (UNICEF).

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