2,300 Liberia refugees opt to stay in Ghana

TWO thousand three hundred Liberian refugees have registered with the Ghana Refugees Board (GRB) and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to legalise their stay in the country.
The figure was what obtained on March 2, 2012 and the registration followed an ultimatum given to the refugees by the UNHCR and the GRB in the early part of February to decide whether or not to voluntarily return to their countries of origin or legalise their stay in the country before March 30, this year.
The action was informed by the decision of the international community to invoke the cessation of clause of 1951 UN Refugee Convention for Liberian, Angolan, Rwandan, and Burundian refugees on the continent.
The Programme Co-ordinator of the GRB, Mr Tetteh Padi, who disclosed this in an interview with the Daily Graphic on Wednesday, affirmed that as of March 2, 2012, only 450 of the Liberian refugees had voluntarily registered to be repatriated.
The management of GRB, he said, was  drafting a proposal to the government to make decisions on the local integration policy or procedure that would apply to those who wanted to legalise their stay in the country, while other GRB officials were currently counselling and collecting data from the refugees to help in easier and faster facilitation of the project.
Liberians,  with a population of  11,301 registered with the UNHCR and the GRB as refugees as of the end of 2011, constitute the largest population affected by the cessation invocation in Ghana.
Mr Padi noted that the reasons given by most of the refugees who wanted to legalise their stay in the country were the fear of death when they went back to their country.
Others also said they did not have enough belongings or property to start a new life in their country, while some other refugees complained that they were born here in Ghana and had lived here for a very long time, thus, they would not know where to go to when they went back to their country of origin.
The invocation would be the legal end of the refugee status for Liberian, Angolan, and Burundian refugees on June 30, 2012, while that of the Rwandan refugees would end on June 30, 2013.
The international community  deem it fit for the refugees to return to their countries, since the conditions that pertained in their countries at the time they left have changed.
In Liberia, for instance, there had been two successive elections and the war in the country has ceased.
Only 33 Rwandans and five Burundian refugees are currently registered with the GRB and UNHCR as refugees.
The UNHCR would only assist registered refugees to return home and any effort by those who did not register after cessation would be made without UNHCR assistance.