The Dominion - Ghana

"We Are Tired"

hillarybain — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:30:58 +0000

Fate of Liberian refugees uncertain

There’s an African proverb that reads: “When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.” It’s an adage that rings all too clear in Liberia after nearly 15 years of civil war.

While leading a coup d'état in 1980, Samuel Doe murdered and subsequently replaced Liberia's president, William R. Tolbert. Doe reigned for 10 years until the notorious Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) attacked Liberia on Christmas Eve, 1989. Civil war ensued for the next 14 years.

The Buduburam refugee settlement, located an hour outside Ghana's capital, Accra, is home to some 35,000 Liberian refugees, a number that fluctuates daily as refugees constantly come and go. Some of Buduburam's inhabitants have been there for up to 18 years, while others have just arrived, but all have one thing in common: they are seeking asylum.

In the 14 years of war in Liberia, more than 200,000 people were slain, some 800,000 internally displaced, and an estimated 350,000 Liberians fled their country. Liberia's infrastructure, education, health system and economy crumbled.

Liberia has been relatively peaceful since the signing of the August 2003 Peace Agreement in Accra, moving the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to launch a voluntary repatriation program in October 2004; the program came to a conclusion on June 30 of last year.

Under the UNHCR, registered repatriates were transported from their country of exile to Liberia via ship or air. Once in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, the UNHCR gave each repatriate $5 US and four months' ration of wheat, blankets and basic cooking utensils.

According to the UNHCR, 6,320 Liberian refugees from Ghana and over 110,000 people from other West African countries have passed through the UNHCR's repatriation program. This has still left an estimated 72,000 Liberian refugees in West Africa. Ghana is currently home to one third of those refugees, totalling some 36,000 people.

The UNHCR has been pressuring the Ghanaian government to reintegrate remaining refugees into Ghanaian society where they are currently not allowed to work legally. Starting from February 19, 2008, however, hundreds of Liberian refugee women began protesting the UNHCR’s stance. Protesters are demanding resettlement in a third country-–namely Europe or North America-–or $1000 US for each refugee to travel back home.

“Basically the refugees want an increase package from the UN in order to return to Liberia, or to be resettled in a third country of asylum,” says Leon Toe, 26, a resident of Buduburam and a Liberian journalist. “They want the UNHCR and the governments of Liberia and Ghana to either resettle refugees or take them back to Liberia and give them money. More than five dollars to restart their lives,” says Toe.

Many of the residents insist that five dollars and some grain simply will not be enough to sustain them while rebuilding their homes and lives.

“The camp is really heating up,” says Joseph Keanmue Tokpah, a resident of Buduburam for the past eight years. “The women even sleep on the field where the repatriation is done [in protest].”

“There is tension in the air. There is fear because most people fear that anytime the military can take action,” says Toe.

Ryan Bolton was living and reporting at the Liberian refugee camp from the end of July until September with Journalists for Human Rights.

Shortly before this article was published, the author received an email from colleague Leon Toe, a Liberian journalist living in the camps, who was also interviewed in the article.

"Before dawn Monday morning [Mar. 17] heavily armed police raided the camp and took more than 700 women and children to an unknown camp in the east of Ghana. The police took the women and children in about eight buses.

"I pray that things do not get out of hand, or we will all be dead and the world will only condemn the act.

"We are all now living in fear since the Interior Minister ordered the police to arrest our mothers, sisters, wives, and kids, because we do not know what will happen to us males next."

Liberian Refugee Protests 1

Liberian Refugee Protests 2

Like Water for Profit

Thu, 27 May 2004 22:24:24 +0000

An interview with Rudolph Amenga-Etego

Ghanaians gather water from a well in Sukuru. So far, citizens have successfully prevented large-scale water privatization. photo: Will Parrinello

On April 19th, Rudolph Amenga-Etego was awarded the Goldman Prize, often thought of as the "Nobel Prize for the Environment," for his struggle to secure safe and affordable drinking water for the people of Ghana. It is not the word water that repeats itself most often in conversation with Amenga-Etego, however, but the word community.

According to Amenga-Etego, the World Bank has left this critical component out of its plan for water delivery in Ghana. "Their formula does not include communities. Basically, they promote a development that transfers money from banks to governments to multinational corporations. The multinational corporations then deliver the resources to the people who have no say."

Amenga-Etego is determined that the people of Ghana will have a say in the battle over the control of their country's water.

In 2001 the Ghanaian government, which owes significant debt to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), raised water rates by 95 percent in order to help pay off its debt. Many Ghanaians can no longer afford the cost of clean drinking water, and according to the country's Ministry of Health 70% of all disease in the country is water related.

The World Bank and IMF have now offered to loan Ghana even more money in order to rebuild its publicly owned and controlled water system. But the 400 million dollar loan comes with a catch: The Ghanaian government must abandon its practice of subsidising the cost of water for poor communities, and the water must be sold at full market rates.

Amenga-Etego has no illusions about the intentions of the World Bank or the multinational corporations lining up to supply Ghana's water needs. "The World Bank policy is aimed at creating markets for multinational corporations dealing water, and those corporations are not charities, they are in it for the profit."

In response to the threat of privatisation, Amenga-Etego founded the National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water, made up of health workers, farmers, academics, environmental groups, trade unions, students and religious leaders.

"For the past three years there's been a groundswell in resistance to privatisation, and you will see that when you go into the communities and encounter what we call the local action committees."

Communities have been at the heart of resistance in Ghana, and according to Amenga-Etego they are also at the heart of the solution. "Water is meant for human consumption, it's for communities, so if those who benefit are involved then you ensure ownership. You also ensure the issues of governance are addressed because you bring management and accountability to the doorsteps of the people."

The small Ghanaian town of Savelugu provides a working example of the kind of community-based water management model that Amenga-Etego is promoting. A public water company supplies bulk water to the community and the town handles the distribution, rate collection, basic repairs and maintenance of the pipes. "It helps promote grassroots democracy. What is more democratic than involving people in managing their own lives?"

Amenga-Etego insists that Savelugu's community-based system, which is now being used as a model for small towns throughout Ghana, is not only more democratic, but also more efficient. Burst pipes are quickly fixed, collection rates have increased, people who cannot afford to pay for water are known in the community and exempt from any cost and most importantly, people in Savelugu have easy access to clean, affordable drinking water.

Community mobilisation and organising paid off in 2003 when the Ghanaian government bowed to pressure and suspended the water privatisation project. But the battle continues: the government is currently working to secure parliamentary approval of a new water privatisation plan and the World Bank has hired a public relations firm to lead a media campaign to promote the plan.

"Communities have to get their acts together" throughout Ghana and around the world, says Amenga-Etego. "We must establish networks of communities in defence of the right to water. These networks must share information about these companies, because they are the same companies."

Amenga-Etego believes that multinational corporations, such as U.S.-based Bechtel Corporation, Vivendi, Saur, Suez Lyonnaise of France and the U.K.'s Biwater, "have realized that the gold of today is water, and because the availability of fresh water is reducing due to climate change and other environmental problems, the value of water is increasing. Whoever controls the water in the future will control the wealth. Whoever controls the world's water is controlling the world's life. If people are serious about stopping this trend they need to stop the corporations"

- by Hillary Lindsay -