A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

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A sizable number of those individuals
were children who had been born
in Ghana and who had never seen
Liberia.
In 1990, Liberian refugees began
pouring off of ships into the port of
Tema, near Accra, Ghana. Escaping
the devastation in Liberia, they
sought safe haven in Ghana’s relative
stability. None of these Liberian
refugees thought they would still be
in Ghana almost two decades later. In
the settlement, there is an overriding
sense of languishing in limbo and
deep frustration about what is seen as more than a decade of life wasted. Even so, refugees in Ghana
expressed little interest in returning to Liberia at the time, often because of an abiding fear. Events in
Ghana, however, pushed many to return home.
BuduBuram refugee Settlement – life in limBo
Chapter Thirteen
Buduburam was established, like most refugee camps, as a tent city to provide for the immediate
needs and physical security of a war ravaged population. The settlement, approximately 35 kilometers
(22 miles) outside of Accra, is adjacent to a Ghanaian village. A panoply of international agencies
coordinated by UNHCR provided services in the early years of the camp’s existence. A statement giver
told the TRC “first [we] lived in a shelter. The U.N. gave [us] a tarp and you cut your own sticks. People
could build houses.” 203 Another statement giver noted that in “Ghana there were many volunteers
to help with food and supplies.” 204 As a result of the more than a decade of conflict in Liberia that
made return unimaginable for many, Buduburam became increasingly established. Residents replaced
tents with more permanent structures of brick, tin, or wood. Today the settlement looks much like
Ghanaian villages in the surrounding district, except that almost everyone living there is Liberian. 205
Despite the surface similarities, life in Buduburam is not like life in other Ghanaian villages. Liberians
live in a protracted state of limbo. As outsiders living in Ghana, but with nothing to draw them home
to Liberia, they wait for something to force a change. Many Liberians in Ghana have a precarious
legal status. Through the 1990s, UNHCR recommended prima facie refugee status determinations
for Liberians entering other African countries. 206 This determination enabled Liberians to access the
valuable refugee identification card that entitled them to a number of services. In 2000, however, the
Ghanaian government began processing refugee status determinations on an individual basis. 207 This