Liberian Refugees In Ghana Fear Returning Home
In 1990, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) opened the Buduburam Refugee Camp located in Ghana in West Africa. The camp housed mostly Liberians who fled the violence that marred their country during the Liberian Civil War in the 1990s and during the Second Liberian Civil War that began in 1999 and ended in 2003.
Some 45,000 refugees, mainly women and children, reside at the refugee camp according to one UNHCR survey and as of January 2007, Liberian refugees still remain in Ghana despite the presence of 15,000 UN forces in their own country. Now, the Buduburam Refugee Camp faces closure and that is an unsettling fact for many refugees still residing there.
It is understandable why Liberians in the Buduburam Refugee Camp fear going home. In a country battered by years of civil unrest, unemployment in Liberia "stands at a staggering 85 percent" according to the World Food Program website and the country has a life expectancy of just 42 years (World Health Organization 2004 study).
Macedo, a refugee who lived at the Buduburam Refugee Camp for 11 years, came to know about the closure of the camp when he lived there in 2006, six months before it was first slated to close.
"The piece of land, upon which the camp was built, was leased from the Government of Ghana and the local Ghanaian chiefs of the area and they leased the 25 square miles of land to the UNHCR for a period of 17 years, after which the land and its possessions would be returned to the local inhabitants of the area," Macedo says.
The lease on the land ended in 2007 and every refugee at the camp knew this would happen but Macedo says that the continued reality of persecution and violence which marred Liberians in the past coupled with a shaky faith in the current government makes many refugees weary of returning home.
While Liberia's president and cabinet attempt to set up a stable government in the presence of 15,000 United Nations Peacekeepers, Macedo says Liberia still isn't safe and it won't be "until [Ellen Johnson] Sirleaf has her own security system in place and when the UN Peacekeepers have left the country."