UN refugee agency continues efforts to find worker abducted in Guinea
20 September -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today that it has initiated a number of actions to locate a female staff member who was abducted by unknown gunmen in Guinea on Sunday, in an attack that left another aid worker dead.
In a statement issued at UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva, the agency said that its Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Abou Moussa, had sent a letter to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), asking for help in finding Sapeu Laurence Djeya.
Mr. Moussa also appealed to all countries in the region to intervene at any possible level to help secure her release, and used the media to ask Ms. Djeya's kidnappers to release her without conditions. In addition, UNHCR offices have contacted the governments of Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea and Liberia directly, while staff at the agency's headquarters in Geneva have been in touch with the governments of the United States, the Netherlands and France, which have promised to assist in the process.
At the request of High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata, Assistant High Commissioner Soren Jessen-Petersen will travel to the region on Friday to meet with key leaders in Abidjan, Conakry, Freetown and Monrovia, as well as visit Ms. Djeya's family to convey the "strong support" of UNHCR and the High Commissioner.
Meanwhile in New York, preparations are under way for a silent march to be held tomorrow to commemorate staff who have been killed in the line of duty and to draw attention to the need for strengthening staff security. The UN Staff Unions and Associations around the world are also issuing a petition to the Security Council, calling for a special session of the Council to deal with staff safety and security issues.
As for the UNHCR staff member killed on Sunday during the abduction of Ms. Djeya, his remains have been transported by road to Conakry and laid in the cathedral, where a religious service will take place on Thursday. The remains of Mensah Kpognon will then be flown to Lomé, Togo, where he will be buried on 30 September.
Mr. Kpognon was the 19th UNHCR staff member killed since the beginning of the 1990s, and the fourth to be murdered in less than two weeks. On 6 September, East Timorese militiamen in West Timor attacked the UNHCR office in the border town of Atambua, killing three aid workers. It was the worst ever attack on UNHCR, whose more than 5,000 staff help 22.3 million refugees and displaced people in some 120 countries, often in difficult and dangerous conditions.
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