A senior government minister has accepted that corruption is a problem following allegations levelled by Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last week completed the repatriation of Sierra Leonean refugees who had returned from Guinea to their original homes in Sierra Leone, the agency's spokesman Kris Janowski said in Geneva last Friday.

The International Human Rights Law Group is a non-profit organization of human rights and legal professionals and activists engaged in advocacy, training and litigation around the world. The Law Group's mission is to empower human rights advocates and defenders at the national level to expand the scope of human rights protection for men and women, and to promote broad participation in building human rights standards at the national, regional and international levels.

During a recent site visit to West Africa, the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) spoke with more than 30 Sierra Leonean women and girls—refugees, internally displaced, and returnees—about their experiences and the reintegration obstacles they face in Sierra Leone. Many of the women and girls had lost spouses, parents, children and other family members in the fighting or had suffered or witnessed atrocities.

The repatriation of Sierra Leonean refugees from Liberia by sea - currently the only safe way to move them - started last Friday and is expected to continue with a weekly load of 600 persons, the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees reports. Some 4,500 refugees had registered to return home, UNHCR said.

Sierra Leone has just emerged from possibly the most brutal conflict known to sub-Saharan Africa. Now it faces a new challenge, having been identified as being on the brink of an HIV/AIDS crisis.

Calm returned to Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, last Friday after clashes between rioting youths and Nigerian businessmen in the city centre on the previous day, sources told IRIN.

Some 7,000 children left the battlefields when combatants in Sierra Leone's savage civil war started turning in their guns last year -- the youngest just 6 years old.

The May 2002 election in Sierra Leone was the country’s first truly non-violent vote. Sierra Leone continues to make remarkable progress in ending its 11-year civil war. However the election also highlighted a potentially dangerous division between the government and the military, and demonstrated that ethnic tensions remain significant, according to a report from the International Crisis Group.

The new government of Sierra Leone must act decisively to address the issues that gave rise to the bloody decade-long war, Human Rights Watch says in a new briefing paper. President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, who will preside over the formal opening of a newly-elected parliament, must set as top priorities steps to establish the rule of law and seek accountability for past abuses. Failure to do so will undermine efforts to establish lasting peace and stability.

The International Rescue Committee seeks a SARC Program Manager for its Sierra Leone Program. The SARC (Sexual Assault Referral Center) project is an innovative addition to IRC's SGBV program in Sierra Leone. The purpose of the SARC will be to provide consistent, appropriate, timely and accessible medical and psychosocial services to survivors and raise awareness of gender based violence and legislative and community action to combat it.

The arrival of some 8,000 new refugees from Liberia into eastern Sierra Leone in recent days has put a potentially dangerous strain on war-damaged Sierra Leonean villages along the border and threatens to sidetrack efforts to reintegrate tens of thousands of repatriated Sierra Leonean refugees into their home communities, according to an on-the-scene assessment this week by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), the public information program of Immigration and Refugee Services of America.

The influx into Sierra Leone of people fleeing instability in Liberia has continued steadily since clashes last week between pro- and anti-government forces near the western Liberian town of Sinje.

About 300 of the 2,061 Sierra Leonean refugees in Nigeria have opted for voluntary repatriation and are expected to go home soon, according to a senior Nigerian official. Nigeria's Federal Commissioner for Refugees, Professor Isaac Gabriel, told a news conference on 21 June that efforts were being made to help the refugees go back now that peace had returned to Sierra Leone.

Nearly six months after the end of disarmament in Sierra Leone, at least half of the ex-combatants demobilised between September 1998 and January 2002 are yet to be reintegrated, officials in the capital, Freetown, told IRIN. The reintegration programmes were intended to prepare the 69,463 demobilised ex-combatants for re-absorption into their communities. However the process has been slow and ex-combatants were becoming "restless", the officials said last Friday.

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that escalating conflict in Liberia and increasing incursions by armed elements into Sierra Leone portend a "worrying trend".

Sierra Leone's newly elected parliament sat for the first time on Tuesday, electing Justice Edward Cowan as speaker and Elizabeth Alpha Lavallie as deputy speaker. Both are from the ruling Sierra Leone's People's Party (SLPP). The session, held at Parliament Building, Tower Hill, in the capital, Freetown, was attended by 120 members out of 124, including opposition leaders.

An estimated 4,000 people have fled to Sierra Leone from Liberia following a rebel attack last Thursday on Sinje refugee camp, northwest of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

As they struggle to reintegrate back into their communities following civil conflict in Sierra Leone, women and girls who have been sexually abused by combatants are receiving much-needed assistance from Christian Children's Fund, which is promoting community dialogue and education in the country.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last Friday urged the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to release five abducted nurses and an ambulance belonging to their NGO, MERCI. LURD rebels attacked Sinje refugee camp, 80 km northwest of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, last Thursday, taking away the nurses and causing Sierra Leonean refugees and displaced Liberians to flee.