|
|
Ghana: Cessation Clause Invoked Over Refugee Demos
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
20 March 2008
Posted to the web 21 March 2008
Accra/Dakar
Ghana's government has invoked a clause of the 1951 Refugee Convention to force the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to close operations for 26,000 Liberians in Ghana.
The move came after the Ministry of the Interior arrested 630 Liberians on 17 March, mostly female and child refugees, for holding a one-month protest which aid officials said obstructed food distributions in the Buduburam camp. UNHCR staff had reportedly been threatened by the protestors.
The protest started on 19 February with refugees delivering a petition to UNHCR and the Ghana Refugee Board saying they "strongly oppose" integration into Ghanaian society. The petition called for resettlement to a third country, or US$1,000 per person to help them return to Liberia - ten times the US$100 UNHCR was offering.
According to a statement from Ghana's Ministry of the Interior statement, the refugees' refusal to be integrated into Ghanaian society after some of them had spent 18 years in the country was "very insulting".
Ghanaian Minister of the Interior Kwamena Bartels said in the statement that the arrested Liberians, who are currently being held at a youth centre close to the refugee camp, would be stripped of their refugee status and forcibly deported to Liberia by the end of the week.
"The government will not countenance such unruly behaviour by refugees who have been given protection and hospitality in the country for 18 years," the Interior Ministry's statement said.
The government invoked a clause in the 1951 Refugee Convention which states that when conditions have improved in a refugees' country of origin then the host government is no longer obliged to host them.
UNHCR said it is still hoping the government will relent. "We are trying to say that maybe these 630 people committed unlawful acts [should] be prosecuted, but they should be differentiated from the other 25,000 refugees who have behaved properly without creating problems," UNHCR spokesperson Cecille Pouilly told IRIN, adding that UNHCR had ruled out paying the refugees more than the US$100 offered.
A human rights group in Ghana has warned the government that it may be violating refugee law by having arrested the 630 demonstrators in the first place. "If they have broken the laws of Ghana then it's only the courts that can sanction them and not the interior ministry," said Edward Amuzu, the director of the Legal Resources Centre, a local non-governmental legal advocacy group.
Liberia's government announced it is sending a high-level delegation on a five-day mission to Ghana.
A total of 42,034 Liberians were registered in Ghana in 2004, one year after the end of the 1989-2003 civil war in Liberia, according to UNHCR. Some 70 percent are from Liberia's Montserrado County, with the remainder mainly from Bong County, according to UNHCR.
Both counties have been declared safe by the Liberian government using indicators such as the level of social and economic infrastructure and the number of spontaneous returnees.
More than 850,000 Liberians fled the country during the brutal civil war. Some 100,000 have already been repatriated by UNHCR from around the West African region.
|
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
It is a sad event that after all these years of relative calm, Liberian refugees in Ghana are being treated as criminals. As a sister of some refugees, I am disssapointed with the treatment which my relatives have recieved. I can understand the hard feelings from the interior minister about majority of the refugees refusal to integrate into the Ghanaian society. Yet the minister has to understand that most Ghanaians discriminate against Liberians when it comes to getting jobs. 2 of my relatives said that they don't want to integrate because their spaces for resettlement were illegally given to... [Read Full Text]
Africa can never be a united states of Africa, Liberia has refugees camps on its soil from other African countries , what a shame helpless women and children sitting in a open field because they fear to go back home from memories of the war have been beating by Ghanaian police , these people have lost everything in life ( family members, property) they are not ungrateful, being a refugee is not a crime , they are the victims, they did not ask to for what people like Charles Taylor, prince Johnson and so on have done to... [Read Full Text]
Okay!! Now that the war is over, Let the Liberian refugees residing in Ghana go back home. Back home they have pure water to drink and bath. Back home they have their extended relatives waiting to see them. There they will no more live in fear. Now here is the deeds fellow Liberians. In Monrovia there are thousands of Ghanaians living freely and employed by our government, and other agencies. I think it's about time for these Ghanaians to return in their home, in order to make space for our families from Buduburam camp. The Liberian refugees... [Read Full Text]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
