Liberians in Ghana: living without humanitarian assistance

A long brewing crisis in Liberia broke out on 24 December 1989 in Nimba County, plunging the country into seven years of intermittent anarchy and bloodshed. As a result, Liberians fleeing the violence scattered throughout the West African region and beyond. Liberians who escaped to Ghana began arriving there around May 1990 on evacuation flights meant for Ghanaian nationals leaving Liberia. By August 1990 the Ghanaian government set up an ad hoc Committee on Refugees in response to the arrival of an increasing number of Liberian refugees by land and sea. This committee decided to use the abandoned church premises of Gomoa Buduburam, located about 45 minutes drive East of Accra, as a reception centre for accommodating this influx.

By the end of September 1990 there were about 7,000 Liberians at Buduburam, the refugee camp, with an estimated 2,000 settled on their own in Accra (Essuman-Johnson, 1992:37). While Ghanaian churches and generous individuals were the first to come to the aid of the refugees, the Ghanaian government called upon the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide assistance. Under the care of the humanitarian aid regime, a flood of relief aid descended upon the refugees making food, blankets, medicine, water and other necessities available (Karnga, 1997).

The aim of this paper is to use data collected in Ghana during the summer of 2000 to provide further evidence to refute what Gaim Kibreab (1993) has called ‘the myth of dependency’ among refugees. This myth is based on the assumption that living on handouts fosters a lack of motivation and willingness to work and take initiatives in order to earn an income and become self-sufficient. If this were true one would expect that Liberian refugees would be unable to survive in Ghana without humanitarian assistance, but this has not been the case. Although the gradual process of reducing aid to Liberians began in 1997, as of 30 June 2000 UNHCR officially withdrew all assistance to Liberian refugees in Ghana and the West Africa region in general with the hope that this would encourage Liberians to repatriate. However, Liberians remained in Ghana for reasons that will be explained.

On the basis of the data collected, this paper argues that Liberian refugees are capable, enterprising and industrious, adapting survival strategies and adjusting to changing circumstances in order to maximise opportunities available to them in exile. These findings have general implications for understanding how refugees anywhere are able to live without humanitarian assistance and why they may choose to remain as refugees even when the aid regime considers repatriation the preferable solution.