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FOOD FOR PEACE
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| Names
(clockwise): Fatima,
Kula, Mamie, anonymous, Patricia, Isata |
| Ages
(clockwise):
23, 16, 31, --, 25, 38 |
| Born: Sierra
Leone |
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"Aminata was my war name. I was captured
when I was selling cake in Kabalah. I was forced
to join the rebels, trained to fight and forced
to use a gun.
I was forced to marry the man who captured me
and I'm still married to him. But I wasn't treated
badly. I used to fight in the same battalion as
him; I was vice-commandant in charge of 100 men.
I was really scared at the beginning, but then I got
brave. I was instructed by my superiors to order
amputations and beheadings, but never did it myself.
I don't feel at peace now, but if I had told them
to stop, they would have killed me."
Aminata, whose real name is Amie, says she thought that
she was right to fight, but she cannot explain why.
Like thousands of other children in Sierra Leone,
Amie fell prey to Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary
United Front (RUF) -- captured, threatened
and often drugged, before being trained as a rebel
soldier in the fight to capture the diamond mines
in the east of the country.
Today, she is one of 47,000 ex-combatants receiving
WFP food aid in Sierra Leone, to ease their gradual
reintegration into a society so ravaged by war
that in 2000 average life expectancy was under
26.
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WFP IN SIERRA LEONE
After more than decade
of civil war, president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah officially
declared Sierra Leone's "war don don"
or the war finally over in January 2002.
But peace is fragile in a country that ranks as
the world's poorest, with few roads and virtually
no infrastructure, and WFP food aid is essential
if Sierra Leone is not to slip back into a cycle
of violence and despair.
"Poverty, particularly food poverty, is the
root of many conflicts," says Louis Imbleau,
WFP Country Director in Sierra Leone.
"Food aid plays an important role in facilitating
the peace process in many countries that are trying
to recover after long periods of war."
In Sierra Leone's demobilisation camps, where
some 14,840 weapons have been collected from former
combatants of the RUF, WFP has supported all the
ex-soldiers' food needs.
"Someone with a full stomach and hope of
food tomorrow is less likely to pick up a weapon,"
says Imbleau.
WFP food-for-training programmes have also enabled
the wounded to learn new skills to smooth their
re-integration into society.
Last but not least, WFP food aid is directed at
Amie and some 7,000 former child comrades in arms
- either by providing food through interim care
centres, or using free school lunches to encourage
them to go to school.
 SIERRA
LEONE COUNTRY BRIEF
For up-to-date information
on WFP operations in Sierra Leone, useful contacts,
facts & figures, history of food aid, click
here
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| WFP FOOD
FOR REHABILITATION |
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- Whether it's civil conflict
in Sierra Leone, drought in Ethiopia or floods
in Malawi , sooner or later peace breaks out,
rain falls and rivers recede
But for the victims of natural or man-made disasters,
the crisis continues long after the cause has
faded from the headlines
- After covering emergency
food needs, WFP food for recovery helps people
to rebuild their shattered lives and communities
- Like the food for disarmed
soldiers' programme in Sierra Leone, the agency's
rehabilitation projects are designed to give
disaster-hit communities the breathing space
necessary to get back on their feet
- Disaster-hit communities,
where people have often lost all their worldly
possessions, are paid with WFP food rations
for the time they spend rebuilding roads, bridges
and houses
This allows families to save what little resources
and money they have for the future
- WFP is currently using food
for recovery projects to help millions of Afghans
build a future for their war-devastated country
In the recent past, the same kind of projects
have benefitted Central America, after Hurricane
Mitch, and Mozamibique in the wake of severe
flooding
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