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Today In History |
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On September 8, 1966
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The Severn Road Bridge was officially opened
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Refugee protest turns ugly in Ghana |
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 DAKAR,
9 Nov 2005 (IRIN) - A refugee camp in southwestern Ghana was under
tight security on Wednesday a day after police fired teargas and
warning shots to quell rioting that left buildings and vehicles burned
and some refugees on the run from the law.
Over the course of
the last week, close to 800 of Krisan refugee camp’s 1,700 residents
had set out on foot for the nearby Ivorian border to protest their
living conditions and to push for the right to settle in a third
country other than Ghana and their homeland.
On Tuesday, Ghanaian officials bussed the refugees back to the camp
near the coastal town of Axim but, upon their return, violence broke
out.
“We had to run for our dear lives,” said Padmore
Nyankopa-Arthur, the regional representative for the ministry of
interior. “Even the police had to tactically retreat before we called
for reinforcements.”
“But by that time, the mayhem had already been caused and the leaders had absconded.”
Some
refugees disagree with Nyankopa-Arthur’s account of a professional
police overwhelmed by the irrational behaviour of a mob incited to
violence by a small number of rabble-rousers.
Instead, they
speak of brutal security forces beating people and dragging them before
forcing them back to the camp they had fled.
However, both sides agree on the end result: a badly damaged camp and an unknown number of refugees on the run.
“I’m wanted by security forces,” Kennedy Vanyan told IRIN by telephone from his hiding place.
“If I’m caught right now, I’m a dead body,” said Vanyan, who estimated that 400 refugees were too scared to return to the camp.
West
Africa is home to about 1.3 million displaced people, according to the
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Of the
more than 60,000 refugees in Ghana, some of whom have lived in camps
for over a decade, the vast majority are Liberian and Togolese.
“If
we could leave Ghana, we’d be very happy,” said Vanyan who fled the
civil war in his native Liberia in 1992 and came to Ghana from Cote
d’Ivoire 10 years later when fighting started up there.
There is
a perception within Krisan camp that refugees from certain countries,
namely Sudan and Sierra Leone, are more likely to benefit from a
resettlement programme to a third country.
According to the UN
refugee agency (UNHCR), which works with Ghana’s government to provide
refugees with food, shelter and education, resettlement to countries
like the United States and Australia is one of three durable solutions
for displaced people.
But it is far less common than
repatriation to the country of origin or integration into the host
society, as only one percent of refugees ultimately find a home in a
third country that offers asylum.
“Resettlement is not something
you claim,” said Needa Jehu-Hoyah, public information officer for UNHCR
in Ghana’s capital Accra. “You cannot just walk into a place and say
resettle me.”
Furthermore, the UNHCR said that, although
financial constraints make it very difficult to provide adequately for
large refugee populations, Krisan camp is one of the few in West Africa
to meet established international standards.
Refugees have
been living at Krisan since 1996, and officially UNHCR consider the
site a settlement with semi-permanent structures, shops and businesses
much like any large village.
However, the relatively high standards at Krisan provide little consolation for many of the camp’s refugees.
“People
are discouraged, they are fed up,” Franskkgav Freejust, one of the
camp’s leaders told IRIN from his hide-out “somewhere in the bush”,
adding that refugees want to move on from years of uncertainty.
“People are fighting for the future.”
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