Large Numbers of Refugee Stay Put

UNHCR was prepared to help people who wanted to go back to Liberia last year after it ended the repatriation of Liberians from Ghana in December 1999 "but no one asked to return", a UNHCR official told IRIN.

In fact, large numbers of refugees continue to reside in Ghana even though their countries are peaceful enough for them to return, PANA reported the chairman of the Ghana Refugees Board as saying. He said a sizable number of Liberians who received repatriation packages returned home but later went back to Ghana citing continued insecurity in their country.

Since mid-2000, Liberia has been fighting what it says are insurgents from Guinea. Moreover, Liberia is under the threat of UN sanctions for aid it has allegedly been giving Sierra Leonean rebels and dissidents trying to overthrow the government in Conakry.

UNHCR has been helping Liberians in Ghana since the outbreak of their civil war in 1989. Voluntary repatriations started in 1997 after Liberia's elections, when the UNHCR judged the situation to be conducive for the refugees' return. As part of its phasing-out strategy, UNHCR later stopped an assistance programme for the estimated 8,000 Liberian refugees at the Budubulam camp, about a 40-minute drive from Accra.

Now, UNHCR is awaiting the outcome of its screening of the remaining refugees to determine who qualifies for continued protection from the agency, the official said.

According to UNHCR, Ghana has about 13,000 refugees and asylum seekers. They include between 2,000 and 2,500 Sierra Leoneans, who are camped at Krisa, not far from the Ivoiran border, along with some 350 Togolese. There are also a handful of refugees from Sudan and other countries.