News
By Mary Ann Snieckus,Buduburam
Liberian refugees who have been living in a refugee camp in Buduburam west of the Ghanaian capital, Accra, have begun voluntarily leaving Ghana in record numbers in order to meet the six month deadline given them by the government of the republic of Ghana.
During the week of April 16, large numbers of suitcases, mattresses, large barrels and skeletal pieces of furniture stacked higher and higher upon trucks heading back to Liberia.
These were the belongings of Liberian refugees leaving Buduburam refugee camp after the United Nations announced it would step up efforts to repatriate them.
The change in United Nations plans for repatriation came after a month long protest by the women of the Buduburam camp.
The Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns brought the plight of the 27,000 families living in the refugee camp after eighteen years of limbo to a head during a month long, non violent sit in protest on the football field at the front entrance to the refugee camp in February and March.
Their request for $1,000 per person for a repatriation package back to Liberia, or a move to a third country such as Australia, United States or countries in Europe was heard around the world but failed to move UN officials, whose budgets are already strained by displaced persons around the world.
Ghanaian police quelled the month long protest on March 17 when hundreds of women were detained for several days, resulting in twenty of the leaders deported back to Monrovia. The women were advised not to continue the protest, to await results from meetings between the Ghanaian government and United Nations representatives in Ghana.
In addition, the Ghanaian police raided the camp on an early Saturday morning March 22, arresting some refugee men who were also deported because they lacked the proper paperwork for asylum in Ghana.
The United Nations repatriation package was not increased from the $100 offered since December. However, with UN repatriation plans being put into place, hundreds of Liberian refugees were seen leaving voluntarily in April.
Refugees seen packing their belongings onto a dinosaur size truck spoke of the increase in cost to ship their household furniture and belongings. A suitcase last month cost $10 to ship. Today the same sized suitcase cost $60.
The anger and fear for the unknown was apparent in many refugees, who struggle to find money to ship the essentials that made life bearable, squandered plastic cups, plates, and charcoal stoves used for cooking during the past eighteen years.
Even mattresses, worn and stained from years of use are still important to a family like Veronica Ante’s makeshift family of six who sleep in one room sardine style every night, a tight knit family of the aunt, cousins, brothers and sisters brought together in Buduburam during the Liberian civil war.
With little more than these shipments, the refugees will be traveling back in vans for several days to the Liberian capital Monrovia. But according to one Liberian woman, because of what they went through, the civil war and the prolonged asylum in places like Buduburam; Liberians are now more determined to make it in life.
Mary Ann Snieckus, reporting from a weeklong stay in Buduburam, April 16-25, 2008 Freelance photojournalist & documentary filmmaker: photos & 5 minute video available
Editor @ May 1, 2008
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