The Integration Factor

Integration of refugees into life of host country is one of the United Nation’s and other relief agencies choice of solution. However during the course of the research, about 10 of the respondents (40%) of those interviewed expressed dissatisfaction with the kind of life in Ghana. They expressed that they preferred living in Ghana as refugees until a time when they can be resettled to a third country or would like to return to Liberia when conditions of peace, employment and security are guaranteed. According to 5 respondents (19%), the problem of food diet and lack of knowledge in speaking one of the Ghanaian local dialects were serious impediments towards integration into the Ghanaian society. One of the respondents discussed the issue of language, the high Ghanaian population and the problem

of food diet as impediments for the refugee’s integration into the Ghanaian society in these words:

Integration into the Ghanaian community is much of a problem than a solution. Ghana is overpopulated with almost 25 million people and the government is unable to provide for her own citizens. How can they help us when they cannot help their own people? The problem of food diet is another thing because we do not have the same diet as we Liberians eats rice while Ghanaians prefer corn. Also if you cannot speak any of the Ghanaian dialects, the Ghanaian sees you as an intruder but yet there is no school around here where one can learn the dialect. The equation cannot work here. Resettlement to another country or going back to Liberia if the conditions back home is safe is much more of a guarantee. (Respondent # 9 from interview list).

The integration possibility into the Ghanaian setting was something that was not possible for all the refugees. The population and size of the refugees was a factor of consideration into integrating them in the Ghanaian community. Ghana being a developing country can not easily integrate the entire over 40,000 refugees but some refugees could easily be integrated through marriages or employment. In an interview with the Ghanaian Refugee Board, it was stated that:

Liberians have already started the process of integration as integration started long ago. Some Liberians have jobs or are married to Ghanaians. It will be very difficult to accept all of the Liberians at Buduburam into the process of integration because Ghana is a developing country and do not have all the resources for such a big crowd. (Respondent # 20 from interview list).

The process of integration is quite symbolic for refuges if the amenity that goes along with said process is satisfactory to refugees. According to eight of the respondents (31%) of the sample interviewed at the camp, there was free movement for Liberian refugees around the country and refugees had free access to travel around the entirety of Ghana without producing refugee documents and that there was no story of any harassment as such. However, they explained about the constant imprisonment of Liberians without trial and some skirmishes involving refugees and local Ghanaian at times as well as the secret killings of Liberians around the camp by local Ghanaians without punishment. This was one aspect that the respondents talked highly about as appositive factor as a refugee in Ghana. Below is a statement by one of the refugees:

Security wise to be a refugee in Ghana you are almost like you are in heaven. You are free and the people don’t trouble you with respect to identification cards. Travelling is the same as if you were in Monrovia. But again the law is not on our side as many Liberians are languishing in Ghanaian jail without

being tried. Integrating my children and myself is something that needs a serious attention if they are willing to integrate us another thing. (Respondent # 22 on interview list).

In a response from an executive at the Ghana Refugee Board on the situation regarding the integration of refugee into the Ghanaian setting, he admitted the difficulties involved in integrating the Liberian refugees in Ghana. He mentioned that some Liberians were easily integrated in Ghana through marriages and employment but that was just a few of the many Liberians who have moved away from the camp because they have become independent through the former and the latter as well as through remittances from relatives living abroad.

Liberians and Ghanaians belong to the same region as well as the same continent and besides we are brothers and sisters in African solidarity. We have almost the same kind of life and way of understanding but a different type of culture diversity. Integrating all the Liberians into Ghana is not possible economically and educationally because Ghana is a developing country and that will place pressure on our resources looking at the present population of Ghana. (Respondent # 20).

At the onset of the Liberian civil war, the Ghanaian government accepted the many Liberians that poured into its border. They were accepted as refugees on a prima facie basis owing to the intensity of the war in Liberia. The United Nations office in Ghana then busied itself with all the formalities relating to refugee affairs in terms of registration, feeding, shelter and protection. However, the Ghanaian government through the Ghana Refugee Board began revisiting its assistance and policy towards the Liberian refugees after the UNHCR closed or withdrew its assistance to the refugees in 2000. The UNHCR anticipated that free and fair elections had been held in Liberia in 1997 and it was then safe for the Liberians to return home. A screening process by the Ghana Refugee Board in the year 2000 only qualified about 3500 head of families as refugees out of 9000 head of families. During this time, about 500 family heads were excluded from the process because the Ghana Refugee Board stated that it had ran short of application forms for the refugees. At about this same time, there were some Liberians that were rejected as refugees. But due to the Ghanaian government hospitality to the Liberian refugees, many of them were living at the camp as de-facto refugees. Consequently, in an efforts to help the Liberians, the UNHCR started the repatriation of the refugees back to Liberia in a bid to satisfy one of the UNHCR’s proposed solutions to the problem of increase refugees. While it is true that two

of the schools at the camp are being run and supervised by the Ghana Education Service, most Liberian refugees living at the camp prefer to attend Liberian run schools for various reasons55. Some alleged that Ghanaian schools have a series for rules that are not unique for Liberian students and would prefer to remained out of Ghanaian owned school than attend a Ghanaian school.

Some of the refugees at the camp see the process of integration as a way out into their present nightmare at the camp. Two of the respondents, a parent and a former student expressed frustrations at the integration process. Both were unanimous in their responses in that they were bread winners in both families in terms of education and feeding for their siblings whilst they were living at the camp. Their moving away from the camp to seek integration by marriage in Ghanaian homes around the country is making it difficult to help with user fees and feeding for their younger siblings living at the camp.