Funds to assist refugees dwindling — Ken Dzirasah
As the global community marks this year’s World Refugee Day, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Ghana Refugee Board (GRB) are coping with the decline in funding needed to provide assistance to the more than 18,000 refugees and asylum seekers who are currently in Ghana.
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Marking the day at a roundtable discussion in Accra yesterday, the Chairman of the GRB, Mr Ken Dzirasah, said Ghana’s development agenda limited the amount of resources dedicated to refugee protection.
The theme for the occasion was, “One Refugee Family Torn Apart by War is too many.”
Apart from the dwindling financial assistance, he identified institutional challenges and communal difficulties at the refugee camps as some of the problems they faced and further noted that the time had come to use unconventional means to raise funds for their activities.
Mr Dzirasah stated that the government had set up a ministerial verification committee to investigate the land situation at the Buduburam Camp, following reports of land litigations in the area.
The committee, which is yet to begin its work, he explained, would also make recommendations to the government on what to make of the area after the refugees had finally been repatriated.
According to the GRB, the total number of refugees and asylum seekers in the country summed up to 18,621, of whom 8,699 were Ivorian nationals.
Ghana’s five refugee camps currently host 12,986 refugees who receive food and education assistance. Another 3,964 refugees, who provide for their own living, are settled in urban areas.
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Quoting statistics from the UNHCR, the UN Resident Co-ordinator, Ms Ruby Sandhu-Rojon, said as of the close of 2012, more than 45.1 million people were in situations of displacement, compared to 42.5 million at the end of 2011.
In spite of the reduction in funding, the Programme Co-ordinator of the GRB, Mr Tetteh Padi, said Ghana had fulfilled most of its international obligations relative to refugee protection.
He enumerated the provision of adequate documentation for refugees and asylum seekers and the creation of a database to facilitate the management of services as some of the board’s achievements.
By Sebastian Syme & Francesca Annicchiarico / Daily Graphic