Around 25,000 Liberians have crossed into neighboring Sierra Leone since Janaury, seeking to escape a civil war in their West African home, a U.N. official said Wednesday. Liberia's rebels have stepped up attacks recently against President Charles Taylor's government, and fighting has been reported in five of the country's 15 counties.

The UN agency for refugees, UNHCR, has planned a series of activities in Sierra Leone to celebrate this year's world refugee day, the agency reported in a statement. The activities are scheduled for 20-27 June, it said.

Refugees International (RI) is sending a mission to the United Nations mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) to gain an understanding of why it "succeeded and analyze the implications of its success for other missions", RI reported on Monday. "RI embarked on this mission because of its concern about the refugee outflow from Liberia and the lack of stability in the region. These countries are most affected by the refugee outflow. Liberia was not chosen because of the security situation and difficulties in access," an official of RI in Washington told IRIN.

The resettlement of internally displaced Sierra Leoneans in the formerly inaccessible districts of Kono and Tonkolili started on Tuesday last week and will continue to the end of June, an official in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Activities (OCHA) told IRIN.

Several humanitarian agencies in Sierra Leone have developed action plans to respond to issues of sexual exploitation of vulnerable children, according to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which also reported that a national coordinator for sexual exploitation and abuse is to be recruited. The coordinator is to be based in the OCHA office in Freetown.

Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is facing a massive shortfall in funding but its interim secretariat is hopeful that funds will be forthcoming, Ilan Lax, Policy Adviser to the Interim Secretariat, told IRIN on Tuesday. The TRC has so far received a commitment of US $500,000 from Britain out of a total budget of $9.6 million.

Tens of thousands of farming families in eastern Sierra Leone have started to receive seeds, farm tools and other relief items as part of efforts to help internally displaced persons and refugees resettle in their home villages, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported on Thursday.

The number of Liberian refugees presenting themselves for relocation within Sierra Leone has increased recently following a mass information campaign by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency has reported.

The Petroleum Retailers Association of Sierra Leone has expressed concern about the filth that is associated with fuel distribution at the Kissy Terminal. The present system is very much prone to corruption and abuse by officials of the Kissy Terminal, involving drivers, transporters and the police, as well as representatives of oil marketing companies that the situation requires urgent Government attention.

The second phase of a workshop on election coverage started yesterday at the Institute of Education, Tower Hill, Freetown.

A website that exposes human rights abuses associated with child warfare, and advocates for the cessation of the practice. The website also works to facilitate collaboration across continents, and to make connections between children who could previously only read about war in the abstract (in textbooks) and those in their age group who have directly suffered the impact of war. At the same time, ex-child combatants can relate to other youth around the globe, identifying with their peers and hopefully, realizing that they are not alone.

The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) launched publications on Wednesday designed to help police officers uphold human rights issues during the upcoming elections.

In a country-specific development programme for countries emerging from conflict, the World bank will loan Sierra Leone over US $140-million.

Former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP) are appealing to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to intervene in forthcoming elections in Sierra Leone following a declaration by the country's electoral commission that RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, was ineligible to stand as a presidential candidate, Sierra Leone Web reported on Thursday.

As Sierra Leone prepares for key parliamentary and presidential elections in May, UNDP is working in close cooperation with national and international partners to assist the National Electoral Commission, encourage public participation, and support election observers.

The special war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone could be holding its first trials by late 2003, according to a UN report released on Friday.

More than 6,400 Sierra Leoneans in Liberia have returned home on convoys organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since mid-February, with thousands more helped with transportation from the border.

Sierra Leone's macroeconomic performance is, broadly speaking, on track, making it eligible to receive an immediate disbursement of US $12 million from the International Monetary Fund, the IMF announced on Tuesday.

Former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), including its leader, Foday Sankoh, appeared in court in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, on Monday on various criminal charges including murder, news organisations reported.

They cook, they clean, they kill. In this war-ravaged corner of West Africa, girls as young as 10 are abducted, raped and forced to become guerrilla fighters and "rebel wives."