Child refugees return
2003-11-20 08:09
Monrovia - It was in 1992 that Stephen NDorbor last saw his son Fafolay, then seven, fleeing horrific violence that would continue for another decade in Liberia.
"I felt very bad, because he is my only son in life, my first and my only son," he said on Wednesday after emerging from a hug that sought, in ten minutes, to make up for the years they spent apart.
"Every day I knew that my son was alive. If anything was to happen, the feeling would have come to me," a teary NDorbor said after Fafolay, now 18, arrived home in an air-conditioned car driven by a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
"I am over-happy. I am more than in heaven today, seriously," said the elder NDorbor.
Fafolay was one of six Liberian child refugees reunited with their families on Wednesday after spending years in refugee camps in and around the Guinean capital Conakry.
The six were the first of 707 children signed up for the ICRC's "Where Are Our Families?" programme to reunite parents and children separated by 14 years of nearly continuous war in the impoverished west African state.
A second group of 60 children from Guinea and Sierra Leone was due to be reunited with their families next week.
"It is the dawn of a new era," said 16-year-old Foumba Kanneh after landing at the international airport in the Liberian capital Monrovia.
"I am happy to be back in Monrovia. I am happy to be going home."
Two successive civil wars since 1989 forced some 275 000 Liberians to flee their homeland, most of them seeking refuge in neighboring Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, according to UN figures.
Many parents sent their children into temporary exile alone to ensure they would not be drafted into rebel groups or the feared government militias of warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor, largely responsible for the drawn-out conflicts that claimed an estimated 200 000 lives.
Taylor himself created a "Small Boys Unit" as part of a guerrilla force that rose up in 1989 against the regime of then-president Samuel Doe, conscripting boys no older than 10 into a life of killing, looting and rape.
UN officials estimate that 70% of fighters in the latest conflict, sparked in 1999 when the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) took up arms against Taylor's government, were minors - about 15 000 children.
A power-sharing peace pact signed in August after Taylor bowed to crushing international pressure and stood down to accept exile in Nigeria has seen some 105 000 refugees slowly trickle back into Liberia as part of UN-backed efforts to create lasting peace.
- SAPA