A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

formal organization or protection and security measures, but it provided a
safe community space for the refugees to live together. 181
Other statement givers noted that they received services in the camps in Sierra Leone from nongovernmental
organizations and UNHCR. Statement givers reported receiving medical care 182 and
that younger Liberians were able to continue their education. 183 One statement giver, a young girl
at the time, said that she stayed in Sierra Leone for a year so that she could go to school and that
“everything was provided” by the United Nations. 184
As the Liberian conflict spread to Sierra Leone, thousands of Sierra Leoneans became refugees in
Liberia. The regional conflict pushed both Liberians and Sierra Leoneans back and forth across the
border, as well as to other countries in the sub-region. The young girl described above noted that:
Guinea
In Sierra Leone, Liberians were targeted because the [refugees] were thought
to be rebels. Women were not targeted as much. She told her cousins to
speak their own native language in Sierra Leone so that the rebels there
wouldn’t think they were part of the conflict in Sierra Leone. She told the
kids that they shouldn’t dress like Sierra Leone boys. Her cousins were at
risk in Sierra Leone, and the tension was growing. They didn’t want to stay
in Sierra Leone. She wanted to go back to Liberia. 185
In the late 1990s, Guinea, bordered by Liberia and Sierra Leone, found itself host to hundreds
of thousands of refugees from both countries. 186 Although numbers of Sierra Leonean refugees
diminished starting in 2002, hundreds of thousands of Liberians remained in Guinea. 187 Refugees
were assisted by UNHCR in 60 camps as well as in border villages. 188
According to one statement giver who now lives in Philadelphia:
Life in Guinea was hard. I did not speak French, and I did not have access
to different things that I needed in life. Because of the way I spoke and the
way I dressed, I stood out as Liberian, and people would not talk with me.
Initially, the Liberians were not given ID cards, and the gendarmes would
walk around asking for individuals’ ID cards and they would collect fines
from those who did not have them. Ultimately, though, I was able to get a
job with the IRC… 189
One participant in a palava hut meeting in a suburb of Atlanta told the TRC that Liberians in Guinea
325
Chapter Thirteen