A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

though the government invited UNHCR assistance, it was opposed to camps. Instead, refugees were
encouraged to settle among the local population in the western part of the country, called the Zone
d’Accueil des Refugies. 146
The various periods of turmoil, with intermittent times of peace, resulted in many changes over time
in the number of Liberians living in one of the surrounding countries in West Africa, as demonstrated
by the table below from the UNHCR statistical yearbook. 147
The numbers of refugees have been steadily decreasing since the end of the fighting in 2003. In
February 2006, UNHCR noted that an estimated 160,000 refugees were still outside Liberia, 148 and in
2008 that number had dropped to just over 75,500. 149
Intraregional Refugee Flow
The ongoing conflict in Liberia and the related conflicts that erupted in Liberia’s neighboring countries
resulted in waves of Liberian refugees within countries in West Africa. When war broke out in Sierra
Leone in 1991 and in Côte d’Ivoire in 2003, many Liberians were forced to flee back to Liberia or to
other countries in the sub-region. The statement giver, whose experience when his father took him to
Côte d’Ivoire is described earlier, told the TRC that after his father was killed:
A nice Ivorian found me and helped me find my way back to Liberia.
Just before I made it back to Liberia I was caught by unknown Liberian
combatants. One of the combatants knew me, but didn’t try to help me.
The combatants stripped me naked and were going to sodomize me, but
then other rebels attacked and I escaped in the chaos. Barefoot and naked, I
hiked most of the night, and slept in the bush for two nights. I pretended to
be Ivorian, and worked as a porter in Ivory Coast and eventually made it to
Abidjan and then Ghana. 150
Another statement giver who now lives in Ghana told the TRC of transiting through Sierra Leone,
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Chapter Thirteen