Some Sudanese and Afghan refugees displaying their culture © UNHCR Ghana
The Country Representative for UNHCR, Ms. Esther Kiragu, has called on development partners to prioritize refugee hosting Districts in both the Upper East and Upper West Regions in their development support plans. These two regions are receiving the current emergency influx of refugees from Burkina Faso into Ghana. She said this is very important to help avoid conflicts over resources such as water, sanitation, education, and health and for maintaining peaceful co-existence between the refugees and their host.
Ms. Kiragu was speaking at a ceremony commemorating World Refugee Day in Accra. She said social services in the North were already overstretched even before the arrival of the refugees, highlighting the need to enhance the absorption capacity of these basic services and resources following the influx of refugees.
“People in the North are asking for help to host refugees. What is in short supply is the support to enhance the absorption capacity of their social services.’’
Over the past few months, disturbances in Burkina Faso have resulted in the influx of Burkinabe asylum seekers to the Northern parts of Ghana. It is estimated that about 8,000 Burkinabes have arrived in Ghana. UNHCR and the Ghana Refugee Board have biometrically registered 3,218 of the arrivals, with registration still ongoing.
The government has offered land to be used as a settlement for the refugees and to establish a reception center.
“The school near the settlement is already four times more than its original capacity without refugees. Most of those arriving are children; they must go to school. We can’t leave them idle.”
Speaking on the theme for this year’s World Refugee Day, ‘Hope away from Home,’ Ms. Kiragu explained that for a refugee, hope means being able to rebuild their lives, adding that nothing gives a refugee parent more hope than having their children enrolled in schools. She said refugees are not passive recipients of aid; on the contrary, they want to work and contribute to the local economy wherever they are.
By the end of May 2023, a total of 52,461 refugees had fled from Burkina Faso to coastal countries like Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Benin, 8000 of whom have fled to Ghana. Ghana hosts about 18,000 refugees and asylum seekers from different countries, out of which 11,028 have been biometrically registered and documented by the Ghana Refugee Board, with ongoing biometric registration for Burkinabe asylum seekers.
Cameroonian Refugees in a cultural display © UNHCR Ghana
In his address, the Chairman of the Ghana Refugee Board, Professor Ken Attafuah, reiterated Ghana’s commitment to guaranteeing that refugees live in safety and dignity in Ghana. He added that the government is ready to ensure refugees not only keep hope alive during the period of asylum but that they can develop themselves to make meaningful contributions to the communities they live in and the development of the country at large.
Prof Attafuah said the government guarantees that refugees and asylum seekers access essential social services such as education, health, and livelihood.
He said Ghana also remains dedicated to making sure that refugees develop themselves to enable them to make meaningful contributions to the communities they live in.
The Executive Secretary of the Ghana Refugee Board, Mr. Tetteh Padi, announced that the Board is working towards operationalizing a Refugee Fund. The fund, he noted, will support refugees and make them self-reliant.
According to the latest UNHCR global trends report, a total of 110 million people had been forcibly displaced by the end of May 2023 – out of which 35.3 million are refugees and another 62.5 million are those forcibly displaced within their own countries – referred to as Internally Displaced Persons. Globally, the war in Ukraine was the top driver of forced displacement, but in Africa, the eruption of the Sudan conflict that started in April has led to a dramatic increase of over 500,000 refugees and 1.6 million internally displaced Sudanese within Sudan.
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