Supporting Refugee Protection in West Africa

Instability continues to plague West Africa. Millions of people have been displaced by a series of brutal civil conflicts and continuing repression.

The International Refugee Program’s 1995 study, African Exodus, highlighted a number of serious barriers to the effective protection of refugees in the region. One of these barriers was the difficultly faced by local human rights organizations in advocating effectively on behalf of refugees. We identified the need and the opportunity to work with a number of local NGOs to support their capacity to protect refugees in the region. They subsequently formed a network known as WARIPNET (the West Africa Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons Network).

Refugees in West Africa

Conflict remains a feature of life in West Africa. Millions have been displaced by civil war and human rights abuses across the region. Between 1989 and 1996, the Liberian civil war claimed over 200,000 lives and displaced an estimated 80% of the Liberian population. Neighboring Sierra Leone has also been struggling to recover from a devastating civil war which broke out in 1991 when Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels launched an incursion from neighboring Liberia into Sierra Leone. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from both conflicts poured into Guinea, the Ivory Coast and other countries throughout West Africa. Guinea, one of the world’s poorest nations, hosted as many as 650,000 refugees. Between 1996 and 2001, Guinea hosted more refugees per citizen than any other country in Africa.

Sadly, the conflict in Sierra Leone and Liberia spilled over into Guinea once more in a series of violent attacks in late 2000 and early 2001. Many Guineans, blaming the refugees for the violence, formed vigilante groups that harassed refugees or even physically assaulted them. Thousands of refugees were forced to flee once more, seeking safety both from the forces that they had fled and the population which had hosted them.

Now, as Sierra Leone struggles to build its fragile peace and reintegrate thousands upon thousands of former refugees returning home, conflict between the government and opposition troops is escalating in neighboring Liberia, threatening to send the entire region spiraling into another crisis of displacement.

Similar struggles are occurring elsewhere across the region. The Ivory Coast, previously noted for its stability, was rocked by violence after presidential campaigns deliberately inflamed xenophobic sentiments in an effort to discredit the leading opposition candidate who has strong ties to neighboring Burkina Faso. Violence has erupted once more in September 2002.

Separatists in Senegal’s southern Casamance region have been engaged in a low-level insurgency since 1985. At the same time, Senegal continues to host a population of at least 40,000 Mauritanians who were expelled from their country between 1989 and 1990. Inter-communal violence in Nigeria left an estimated 50,000 people internally displaced at the end of 2002.

Challenges to Refugee Protection in the Region

It is not surprising that this climate of political instability has created many barriers to the effective protection of refugees in the region. Governments, weakened by their own internal instability, have been unable to cope with massive population movements. This has often meant, for example, that they have either been unable, or politically unwilling, to screen arrivals for individuals within the population who may present threats to security of genuine refugees as well as host populations. Where governments have attempted such exercises, most have not followed established human rights principles and have resulted in serious abuses. The International Refugee Program has attempted to address these concerns by integrating the West African experience into our program to develop practical, rights-respecting strategies for ensuring security in refugee movements.

An additional barrier to the effective protection of refugees has been the dearth of economic resources in the region. The countries of West Africa are all at, or near, the bottom of most global development indicators. Poverty, particularly high unemployment, has fueled conflict which has in turn disrupted trade and decreased agricultural production, crippling the regions meager economic structures. Under the circumstances governments in West Africa have relied upon the international community, particularly the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide for refugees. UNHCR’s impact in the region, however, has been crippled by chronic funding shortfalls and irregular cash flow leading to interruptions in aid provision and an inability to tackle long-term considerations proactively. For example, UNHCR was forced to close a number of its offices in the region in 2001 due to lack of funding, leaving refugees in those areas without its protection. The agency has also fallen short of meeting humanitarian needs. The Lawyers Committee has advocated for the adoption of a human rights approach to humanitarian issues. (For more information see Refugees, Humanitarianism and Human Rights.) We have also worked with local partners to promote the acknowledgement of the importance of the social and economic rights of refugees in West Africa by both the humanitarian and the human rights communities.

The lack of a well-developed community of local activists to intervene in situations where local governments and UNHCR have been ineffective in protecting refugees has also had a detrimental effect on refugees. While international organizations can exert their influence on behalf of refugees, their capacity to gather information and respond rapidly is severely constrained. Local advocates on the front lines need to be able to respond quickly and effectively to emerging crises. Over the past few years the Lawyers Committee has worked with a group of activists in West Africa to support their capacity to improve the situation of refugees in West Africa.

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