In West Africa people are facing high unemployment and a high cost of living.  This has led to civil unrest and protests.  In Sierra Leone there are many challenges facing a government that is trying to rebuild the economy.  In addition to this many refugees from Liberia are living in Sierra Leone due to conflict in Liberia.  This has caused tensions between the Liberians and Sierra Leonians.

The refugees have expressed the desire for education and training.  Given these opportunities the refugees are better able to help themselves and have futures outside of the refugee camps.  RESPECT International is one non-profit organisation that is providing the refugees education free of charge.  Volunteers in Sierra Leone provide a link between refugee students and tutors living in many countries around the world.  The tutors send course work and assignments to the volunteers who make sure the students receive it.  Then they email back the completed assignments to the tutors who then mark them and offer encouragement.

This system gives the refugees hope and lets them know that the outside world has not forgotten about them.  The learn not only their course work but that they are entitled to the future they choose despite being caught up in violence and civil disputes and their past.

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Children’s Welfare Primary School

This school was established in 1998.  During this time war in Sierra Leone meant that many children had their homes burned down and their parents killed.  The school has branches in Freetown and in the Provinces: one at Rokel in Kambia district and the other at Sanda Magbolothoh in post Loko district.  In total there are 870 pupils.  we offer classes 1-6 the following subjects: math, language arts, physical health education, social studies, religions moral education, science, agricultural science, creative practical arts, poetry, literature and drama, home economics. Students attended the national primary school examnation (N.P.S.E) 2002, and 2003 school year and have done very well.

Request:

• Our request is (1) building structure, sitting accomodation, teaching aids and learning materials such as text and exercise books, chalks, rulers, pen/pencils, erasers, used clothes, shoes, food, school van, vehicle for the school going childern, football kits, and computers. Incentives for teachers as these schools have a total of 15 teachers and they are all volunteer teachers.

Oru Refugee Camp. Oru, Ogun State, Nigeria.  2008 figures show that over 3000 people live in Oru Refugee Camp.  These people are originally from many countries on Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Central Africa Republic, Congo, Erytrea, Côte-d’Ivoire, Togo, and more.

Some of these people have lived there for twenty years, children born in this time have known no other home.  integration into Nigerian society has proved difficult leaving the refugees feeling ostracised and persecuted.

The camp clinic closed in 2005 and since then health in the camp has dramatically deteriorated.  Without contraception HIV/AIDS has spread and many more children are born into the abject poverty.  Without a regular income many daughters are forced into prostitution to bring home money for food for their parents and siblings.

Education and training is a fundamental need to allow the refugees to make choices about their future and let them earn an independent living.  This is why the work of RESPECT International is so crucial in this and many other refugee camps.  These camps are supposed to be temporary homes for refugees and offer little or no facilities for people.  But if given no other alternative the people are stuck there and the camps will only get bigger thereby increasing the scale of an already serious problem.

“Children live in slums here because their parents or guardians have little to no money for education, clothing, shoes, housing, medicine and food. They are surrounded by so many hardships, frustrations, and a lack of basic care because their loved ones have died, were lost in the war or have contracted AIDS,” Oscar Benjamin.

Growing up and experiencing the trouble in Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) Oscar Benjamin, at seven years old, had a dream of helping the children affected by the violence.  That dream became reality in 2006 in the form of Eye to Eye Child Care (EECC): a community based, child welfare organization that helps children in Uvira and Fizi in the DR Congo get off the streets, out of the slums, and into school.  EECC is a childrens home which provides shelter, protection, food and education.

“One thousand children live on the streets in these two towns alone (Uvira and Fizi). They make a living doing odd jobs and they are promised money for school and then forced into labor or sex and taken out of the country to Burundi, and Rwanda,” he said.

EECC is also working with the government DR Congo to find ways of taking the children off the streets and into a place of safety and back into education.  More importantly they are working towards campaigns which protect children from being taken advantage of.  It is common for adults to promise to feed street children or pay for education but instead the children then become victims of sexual and physical abuse.  Children are also taken away to Burundi or Rwanda, for example, and used for child labour.  In addition to this, drug and alcohol are ever present dangers on the streets hich the children use as escape mechanisms.

One of the important jobs when moving forward is for the EECC to give the children hope for the future.  One of the ways in which he is achieving this is through RESPECT International’s Global Letter Exchange Program.  Refugee students, under the age of 18, write letters to non-refugee students.  “This gives the children the feeling that an opportunity lies ahead of them. It gives them something to look forward to,” he said.  More than 30 children from the EECC will participate in the program.

“I am surrounded by children who have reached a point of vulnerability where they can’t handle life anymore. Children like myself who had dreams, ambitions and goals but who are surrounded by so many hardships, frustrations, and a lack of basic care because their loved ones have died, are lost in war or have contracted AIDS,” Benjamin said.  The Letter Exchange gives the children something to look forward to and Benjamin said it might give the children of the EECC “a feeling of being valued somewhere in someone else’s life.”

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21,500 refugees are currently living in Guinea (UNHCR statistics).  Civil wars in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone have caused tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and seek safety in Guinea.  However, political uncertainty and a recent past of martial law have left Guinea unstable.  Raising food prices and the decline of basic services have increased resentment in the counrty and therefore increase the chance of violence.

After the voluntaty repatriation programs allowing people to return to their counrties of origin an empasis in now being place on local integration.  Those unwilling or unable to return to their countries of origin, integration is the most sustainable solution.  On a voluntary basis refugees will be given the option to leave the camps and move to the neighbouring comminuities where communtiy based projects will help to integrate them.  These programs are also aimed at areas where there are thought to be as many as 50,000 unregistered refugees.   The environments around the refugee camps will also be regenerated.

The needs now are aimed at increasing the rights of the refugees.  Freedom of movement,  access to education, jobs,  public services,  health facilities, the right to buy and sell property, travel and identity documents, permanent residence and, ultimately, citizenship.

Alexandria Elementary School in Guinea, West Africa is just one of the schools in the country dedicated to providing refugee students with an education.  Established by the UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee in September 2001.  The school is currently attended by 557 students.  They have three buildings, consisting of twelve classrooms and provide lessons from ABC through to class six.  The subjects taught include English, French, Maths, Science, Social Studies and Health.

RESPECT International is working with this and other refugee schools in Guinea to make education available to as many refugee students as possible.  To ensure, despite the disruption to their lives, that they have aspirations for the future and the means to persue them.

Also, the Letter Exchange Program seeks to educate non-refugee students about refugee issues by one-to-one correspondence with refugee students.  This lets people in countries such as Canada, USA, Spain and UK understand what life is like as a refugee.  Also, it allows refugees to learn what life is like in these countries and gives them hope for the future.  In fact the Letter Exchange Program has encouraged a number of refugees to further their education at colleges and universities in countries like USA.

Alexandria Elementary School provides a vital service to the refugee community in Guinea and with international links that organisations such as RESPECT provide them with they can offer great opportunities to children whose lives have been disrupted by violence and war.

Ghana has the largest refugee and asylum seeker population of any country in west Africa with over 31,000.  Many of these refugees are from Liberia and are staying in the Buduburam settlement near Accra.  This camp has existed for over twenty years and hosts 40,000 refugees from the Liberian civil war.  In 2008 the governments of both Ghana and Liberia along with UNHCR reinitiated a voluntary repartiation program to allow Liberians to return to their counrty of origin.  Half the Liberian refugee population in Ghana were offered the chance to return to Liberia and the UNHCR has helped thousands to return by air whilst many more are returning of their own accord.

25,000 people living in the camp are formar Liberian child soldiers.  Children who from as young as nine were taught to hate and kill one another but who now live together in the camp.

Part of allowing these children to recover from their traumatic experiences in education.  This lets them know that they have not been forgotten and gives them some hope for a brighter future.  RESPECT International is dedicated to providing free education to as many refugee students in Ghana as possible.

To find out how you can help please visit our website.

An affiliate of Respect International Respect Ghana acts as a bridge between the refugee population in Ghana and the international community.

A dedicated team of volunteers works to raise awareness of refugee issues in Ghana. They are always working to build new ideas for raising awareness and linking refugee students with non-refugee students. They have a number of plans for the future towards these ends and readily collaborate with any organisation that is working for human rights and refugee issues.

RESPECT Ghana: Working for durable solutions

• Resettlement: RESPECT Ghana believes that this option needs to be explored fully to allow refugees to settle permenantly in a third country if they are unable to return to their country of origin or integrate sucessfully in their country of asylum.  This is a unique way for developed countries to help protect and support refugees who in turn have opportunities to contribute in other ways to their new communities.
• Repatriation: The descision to return to their country of origin must be taken by the refugees themselves and any return must be safe and dignified for the refugees and their families.
• Local Integration: The aggreement of a host country for the refugees to remain their permenantly.   There need to be opportunities for refugees to earn a living and become self-reliant in their host countries.   They need to be full members of the community without discrimination but also allowed to keep their own cultural identity.

RESPECT Ghana also actively pursues and supports innovatinve project schemes by refugees themselves.

How You Can Help

The first step is to recognise that refugees are not a threat but that they themselves are threatened.  They are ordinary people who need protection.

• You and members of your community can encourage the government to addopt policies at home and abroad which help refugees find peace and safety.
• You can support financially through donations and by providing International Reply Coupons for Our Global Letter Exchange Programs.

• Your ideas and information as well as proposals for projects or educational materials for refugees will be an incredible resource for the Refugee Communities we serve.

• Individuals and organization willing to partner with RESPECT Ghana and help make its dreams and plans become a reality, please do not hesitate. Kindly contact the Country Coordinator or the International coordinator.

• Country Coordinator
• RESPECT Ghana
• c/o FOBET
• Ayifli Fred Kodzo
• PO Box TA84,
• Ghana-Accra
• Tel – (233) 20-8160450
• ghana@respectrefugees.org

Respect Ghana

To learn more about our Global Letter Exchange click here.

The Mike Immaculate Group of Schools, consisting of nursery, primary, secondary schools and a computer college in Nigeria’s capital Lagos want to enter into a partnership with RESPECT International.

“I want to partner with your reputable organisation because I want a group of organisations encouraging communication between young people across the world,” says proprietor Ademola Ogunyebi.

The group of schools educates 36 refugee students and approximately 280 non-refugee students. Through school projects and RESPECTs Letter Exchange Program and student exchanges the group of schools aim to raise awareness and educate refugees. They also wish to get awareness on some of the schools’ educative projects.

In Nigeria education is free but not compulsory. There, a formal education consists of six years of primary school, three years of junior secondary school and three years of senior secondary school, in addition to four years of university or college education.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are approximately 11,800 refugees in Nigeria mostly from Chad, Liberia, the Republic of Congo and Sudan. Half live in refugee camps and half are urban refugees.

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Artists for Humanity will celebrate its 10th anniversary from December 19 to 25, 2009.

Begun December 19, 1999, in Kinshasa the capital of the Democratic Republic Congo by Amisi Mutambala, the Artists for Humanity initiative (ArtHum) mainly worked in the eastern part of the country with a regionally integrated vision.

Conferences, debates, concerts and cultural and arts-based displays on education, peace, human rights, HIV/AIDS will all take place over seven days in Uvira and Fizi territories (South Kivu province in DR Congo) as part of the anniversary celebrations.

Rewards of recognition will be given to actors both local and international who have distinguished themselves as ArtHum volunteers and work with communities in disaster.

Non-profit associations, foundations, enterprises, state institutions, religious structures as well as individuals who are interested are invited to join the event.

For further information, contact Amisi Mutambala at:

• Dieudonné AMISI MUTAMBALA
• Director & Founder
• Artists for Humanity, ArtHum
• Telephone: +243810343785; +25779979121
• Email: arthum_direction@yahoo.fr

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