FOOD FOR STABILITY

 Name:  Clarice
 Aged:  6
 Born:  Liberia

Kola Refugee Camp, near Nzerekore, in Guinea provides food and shelter to 7,000 Liberians, who have fled the regime of Charles Taylor and the factional fighting in their home country.

Among them is six-year-old Clarice Dennis, who was born in a refugee camp in Guinea.

In 1999, she went to her home country of Liberia for the first time, but within a year her family had to once again return to Kola as fighting resumed.

"We used to produce our own food - cabbage, cassava, rice and pepper - but our house was burned," explains James, Clarice's father, who is now growing WFP-provided rice and vegetables at the camp.

Kola is more like a small town, with a school and huts built around a grid system of mud streets. There is also a market where the refugees sometimes sell their monthly rations of bulgur wheat and beans for other produce such as peanut butter, palm oil and wine, onions and macaroni.

Despite these rations and the food available in the market, many of the children suffer health and nutrition problems, including worms in contaminated drinking water that distend their stomachs.

For James, returning home to Liberia now seems impossible.

"My whole country has been destroyed. There is nothing for us there now. My father was killed because he was in the government and my mother was taken away; I dream of my father and mother hoping that they’re together," he says.

"I find it difficult to sleep here because people hunt animals at night and the sound reminds me of Liberia. The only thing I'm asking for is relocation, somewhere safe for Clarice and my family."

 
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WFP IN GUINEA

Over the past decade, the Mano River Basin (nearly twice the size of the United Kingdom) - Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea - has been torn apart by conflict as arms, diamonds and refugees have crisscrossed fluid borders.

In August 2002, Guinea was one of the world's largest safe havens for refugees. There are nearly 50,000 refugees from Liberia, many of whom are in exile for the second time and a further 41,000 people who fled Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war.

But the protracted presence of refugees in Guinea has stretched the country's resources to the limit, particularly in the densely populated forested southeast. The region has experienced excessive deforestation - for agriculture and construction as well as firewood - and over-exploitation of its land.

The current instability in Cote d'Ivoire has added to the pressure, with a mass influx of refugees and returning Guineans through the southwest region.

In February 2003, WFP launched an emergency Food for Life programme in forested Guinea.

This provides hot meals served in transit centres to IDPs and refugees, monthly distribution of dry food rations in refugee camps, and emergency school feeding programmes. Over the past six months, the programme has fed over 50,000 people.

GUINEA COUNTRY BRIEF
For up-to-date information on WFP operations in Guinea, useful contacts, facts & figures, history of food aid, click here


Guinea 2002 - © WFP/Tom Haskell
 WFP FOOD FOR LIFE  

  • The rising tide of civil conflict, war and natural disasters in the world's poorest nations has led to a near explosion in humanitarian emergencies

    In the 1990s, the share of global aid budgets devoted to disaster relief climbed by more than 500 percent

  • With hunger the first emergency in any crisis, WFP is on the frontline of the ever-widening fight against humanitarian disasters

  • Of the 89 million people who received WFP food aid in 2001, 43 million were the victims of floods, drought, crop failure and war. This included refugees and internally displaced persons

  • The secret to WFP's success in responding to emergencies lies in its ability to move food aid fast and efficiently, often at a day's notice. The agency's Rapid Response teams scramble as soon as a crisis breaks, identifying the fastest route to a hunger hotspot

    If there's no road or bridges, they build them. When there are no airstrips or insecurity makes landing impossible, they arrange for an airdrop

    They even rehabilitate entire ports and railways. And if there are no communications' links, WFP establishes a low cost but efficient telecom link with the outside world

  • Once the supply line is secure, WFP brings in its emergency food supplies via wing, wheel and wagon

    It uses whatever is available: ships, barges, dug-out canoes; trucks and trains; planes, helicopters and air drops; even the backs of donkeys, yaks and elephants