Ghana: Skills for Refugees
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has helped an estimated 50 million people ...
...towards a new life since it was established in 1950, shortly after the end of the Second World War. Tragically, the number of refugees does not seem to diminish with the years, and currently UNHCR is providing assistance to almost 33 million men, women and children.
For the past two decades, Ghana has enjoyed greater stability than its neighbours in West Africa and is consequently viewed as a haven for streams of refugees fleeing political persecution or poverty. The Buduburam Refugee Camp, the largest in Ghana, is located close to the capital Accra, and is home to some 42,000, mostly Liberian, refugees. The refugees have done much to organize themselves; the camp boasts its own open market, supermarket, newspaper, churches, mosques and many other features of a mediumsize town. There is also a medical centre and a number of schools. Nonetheless, the camp faces chronic shortagesin the supply of water and electricity as well as a growing problem of sanitation and hygiene. A second refugee camp in Krisan is located some 300 km from the capital. With 1,700 refugees, it is altogether less bustling than Buduburam but has a wider mix of nationalities, languages and cultures. Food rations are supplied to relatively few people in Buduburam and rations in Krisan are not sufficient to feed a typical family for the entire month. The first priority of any assistance programme is to help refugees find profitable and sustainable activities to serve their short-term needs. For this, they need skills and experience that will enable them to be productive as soon as they are repatriated, relocated or integrated into the local community.
Compounding the problem of shortages is a lack of social cohesion that UNHCR, together with other partners, has tried to address by organizing a range of activities for refugees. Activities include skills training in areas such as construction, farming, carpentry, sewing, soap making, hairdressing and batik making, to mention a few. They have also facilitated micro-credit schemes to help launch refugee activities although with mixed results. Refugees are hampered by a lack of business skills and an entrepreneurial approach. Most of them do not speak a local language and encounter problems in marketing their products. To make matters worse, there is undoubtedly a measure of built-in resentment on the part of local communities towards the refugees.
Although the most closely involved, UNHCR is not the only United Nations body present in the two camps. UNIDO has a clear-cut role in teaching refugees the skills needed to set up their own micro or small-scale businesses, both for their own benefit and for that of their host communities. Under a new project that began in October 2007, UNIDO is the lead agency addressing the income-earning potential of refugees. Food-processing is a clear choice and an area in which UNIDO has extensive experience, although there are many other options.
One interesting feature of the project is that it combines different aspects of agricultural production with an enterprise approach to processing and other activities. It calls for the concerted efforts of UNHCR, UNIDO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) who complement each other’s activities in the camps and communities, with each organization working in its particular area of expertise and comparative advantage. The project differs from previous assistance in that it is based on feasibility studies and market assessments for enterprise development and started out with market studies. It also builds on information from the UNIDO Rural Enterprise Development Support project in terms of buyers and markets. The project is designed to familiarize trainees with a market-based approach to enterprise development and allow them to see firsthand how to negotiate with buyers from end-markets, set prices and avoid middlemen. They will also be exposed to the demands of the market in terms of consistent product quality.
Considerable training time will be spent actually applying the technical skills learned in the classroom to the creation of functioning enterprises. In addition, the project will endeavour to integrate refugees and local communities in mutually reinforcing relationships of production and marketing. This has not been done in previous assistance, yet it provides the best chance for long-term sustainability and increased security for both the host communities and the refugee population. The local communities surrounding the refugee camps will also be active participants in the project and will be invited to take part in training activities. At least 20 per cent of all training activities will be especially designed for them and local trainers will be employed to the extent possible.
UNIDO is one of five United Nations agencies providing similar support in the United Republic of Tanzania, that hosts 500,000 refugees.
