Rebecca Napier-Moore, IDS, University of Sussex

(Rebecca worked as an intern for UNHCR in Ghana from July to September 2006. She worked both in Accra and in the Buduburam Settlement an hour's drive outside Accra.)

Living with ten children and grandchildren in a 3-square meter, dark, unventilated room, a Liberian refugee woman has been in Ghana since 1990. With a medical condition that prevents employment, she waits. She has false hopes of being able to go to the US through a resettlement programme that is now closed to her.

Liberian refugees in Ghana are, in many ways, “on hold” and in limbo. Some have been in Ghana since the conflict in Liberia started in 1990. Others arrived during a more recent 2002 wave of conflict.

On the outskirts of Accra, Ghana’s capital, the camp is the only home many refugee children have ever known. The camp has grown to be more of a small town, with the biggest market in the district, a camp newspaper, and an international bank.

This summer I interned with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at the camp. I went to the camp two to three times a week with my UNHCR internship position, meeting hundreds of people through my work and watching the football matches in the empty field nearby.

International actors have declared the war in Liberia over, saying it is time for Liberians in other countries to go home. The US, among others, has virtually ‘closed’ resettlement for Liberians to go to the US and is choosing to fund large scale development projects in Liberia instead.

Many Liberian refugees are indeed tired of waiting in Ghana, but see no option for themselves. A real fear exists for many from past persecutions in Liberia. So instead of returning, they continue to live in an enclave of Liberians in Ghana, which is thriving relative to most other refugee communities, but which has an unemployment rate and a food-aid dependency rate far above that of Ghanaians.

The Liberian English accent is not unlike that of my grandparents who grew up in historically slave-dependent South in the USA. Liberia was founded by freed American and Caribbean slaves, whose descendents make up only 5% of the population. But their mark is seen in language, culture and nationalistic ties to the US. Many people in the camp have family in the US, and on 26 July Independence Day, the Liberian flag waves, looking strikingly similar to the US flag. Flag-waving gives celebratory relief, but no solution to their long-term camp situation.