American Refugee Committee Evacuates Sierra Leone Country Director

American Refugee Committee
Friday, 12 May 2000

The American Refugee Committee (ARC) has evacuated its country director for Sierra Leone due to increasing instability in the West African nation. Martha Saldinger, who arrived in Sierra Leone in March to launch ARC's operations there, has been temporarily relocated to Conakry, Guinea, with her husband and seven-year-old son.

The security situation in Sierra Leone has deteriorated in the wake of clashes between rebel forces and United Nations peacekeepers.

Saldinger had been working in Freetown to set up an ARC program to help people who were displaced and traumatized by the country's devastating civil war. The program would offer services to refugees returning from Guinea and Liberia, as well as internally displaced people, in areas including reproductive health, microcredit (small loans) and vocational training and counseling for ex- combatants.

ARC hopes to be able to resume its operations in Sierra Leone once security improves.

Saldinger and her husband, Tim Curley, are former Peace Corps Volunteers in Sierra Leone and helped to found Friends of Sierra Leone, a group that supports the country and works to educate the American people about it.

The American Refugee Committee is an international nonprofit, nonsectarian organization providing multisectoral humanitarian assistance and training to displaced people in Africa, Asia and Europe.

For more information, or to contact American Refugee Committee, see their website at: www.archq.org