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Living on charity: all that a refugee desires?

Are refugees hooked on handouts? Do refugees who receive humanitarian assistance become dependent and passive? Should they be cared for in camps? Why do some choose to remain refugees when the aid regime considers repatriation the preferable solution? Are western notions of compassion ethnocentric and paternalistic?

A paper from the UNHCR's Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit reports how displaced Liberians are surviving in Ghana without humanitarian assistance. Arguing that Liberian refugees are capable, enterprising and industrious, it analyses their survival strategies and ability to adjust and maximise opportunities. Findings have global implications for understanding how refugees are able to get by on their own and why they may choose not to go home.

The paper negates the arguments, routinely made in emergency after emergency, in favour of placing refugees in camps. In Zaire and Tanzania, Rwandan refugee camps became bases for military operations and civilians were put at risk. Health concerns arise in crowded camps with insufficient access to medical care. Camps can increase the marginalisation of refugees. Privileged refugee access to international assistance can create tensions with poorer host populations.

For most of the 1990s the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees met the main material needs of Liberian refugees in Ghana. In 2000, UNHCR cut off support in a vain effort to put pressure on the refugees to return home. Exact numbers are, as in many countries of refuge, hard to determine but it is believed there are between 8 000 and 20 000 Liberian refugees. While most live in the Buduburam refugee camp, others live in Accra for work or education, with considerable movement back and forth. Most disagree with UNHCR’s assessment that it is safe to return home. By clinging to their ‘refugeeness’ they advance the prospects of eventually being resettled in the USA.

Evidence of their resourcefulness includes:

Like industrious refugees elsewhere, Liberians trade what they have in order to get what they need: given culturally inappropriate maize rations by UNHCR, they sold them to the Ghanaians to buy rice.
Camp-based organisations, supported by a strong church network, are proactive in providing health, sanitation, education and vocational training services.
Men and women are running successful tailoring, clothing, shoe, carpentry and electrical goods repair shops and beauty salons as well as selling clean water and cooked food and offering IT and typing training.
The sudden growth in telephone enterprises enables Liberians to keep in touch with relatives and receive remittances from the USA.

While Liberian refugees were set back by the war, they were not disabled by it. Living under the aid umbrella has not transformed them into children who need looking after. The paper urges the international humanitarian community to dispose of the myth of refugee dependency and to realise that:

refugees do not appear out of a historical vacuum lacking in social networks, skills and experiences
they are not necessarily a group of traumatised people whose social norms have disintegrated
refugees do not form uniform groups: each family and every individual is shaped by different opportunities, experiences and capacities
the distinction between camp and self-settled refugees is not clear cut when one considers the variety of coping mechanisms used by refugees.

Source(s):
‘Liberians in Ghana: living without humanitarian assistance’, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper no 57, Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by Shelly Dick 2002 Full document.
‘Changing the Equation: Refugees as Capable Resources Rather than Helpless Victims’, in Praxis: The Fletcher Journal of Development Studies, by S. Dick 2003 (forthcoming edition)
‘Liberia Research Guide’, Forced Migration Online Project, by S. Dick 2003 (forthcoming) Full document.

Funded by: Fulbright-Oxford Scholarship and Laila Hirani Travel Grant

id21 Research Highlight: 1 March 2003

Further Information:
Shelly Dick
3211 Adams Mill Road, NW
Washington, DC 20010
USA

Contact the contributor: globenomad@yahoo.com

International Development Centre
Queen Elizabeth House
21 St Giles
Oxford, OX1 3LA
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 273600
Fax: +44 (0)1865 273607

Queen Elizabeth House (QEH), UK

Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit (EPAU)
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Case Postale 2500
CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt
Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 739 8111
Contact the contributor: hqep00@unhcr.ch

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

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