By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY (Reuters) - Sierra Leoneans who fled their country's 1990s civil war will lose their refugee status next January 1, a U.N. official said on Monday.
Sierra Leoneans living abroad still classed as refugees must choose between repatriation, or integration into local society, said Dillah Doumaye, representative of the United Nations High High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in neighbouring Guinea.
Guinea received the greatest number of people fleeing Sierra Leone in the 1990s, when more than 600,000 refugees from twin civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia sought safety there.
"Today the situation has returned to normal in Sierra Leone and living conditions are no tougher than in Guinea," Doumaye said.
Most people in Guinea are desperately poor even though the country has one third of the world's known bauxite reserves and is the leading exporter of the aluminium ore.
"We have concluded that there is no longer a good reason why a Sierra Leonean should be a refugee in another country," Doumaye said. The war was officially declared over in early 2002 and a huge U.N. peacekeeping operation ended at the end of 2005.
According to official UNHCR documents, around 7,000 Sierra Leonean refugees are in Guinea, of whom 4,000 are in urban areas.
Those who choose to return to Sierra Leone, which the U.N. ranks as the world's least developed country, will be given food and cooking utensils, as well as $100 each, he said.
"If a refugee thinks he has good reasons not to return home, he must give the UNHCR a detailed account of these reasons and it will study them," Doumaye told Reuters.
The decision to terminate the refugee status of Sierra Leoneans was taken by the international community, the UNHCR, aid donors, human rights organisations and the Sierra Leone government, he said.
Around 100,000 Sierra Leoneans returned home from Guinea with the help of the United Nations between 2000 and 2004, in the closing stages of more than a decade of war in Sierra Leone.
Still, thousands more refused to go back, hoping to win political asylum in the West.
Some of those living in camps around the south-eastern town of Kissidougou, 600 km (375 miles) from Conakry, have spent more than 10 years lobbying the UNHCR to help resettle them elsewhere.
