Laine refugee camp, Guinea.
Credit: IRIN |
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Sitting on the ground under green plastic sheeting, which wards off the midday sun, Tina waits to gain entry to the warehouse used by UN agencies. Tina is calm, but the woman next to her becomes agitated and wakes up the child sleeping on her knees.
Tina, her aunt and Prince, the baby, are Liberians, like the other hundreds of men, women and children growing impatient as they wait outside the building occupied by the UN Refugee agency, UNHCR, and the UN World Food Programme (WFP). They have been there for hours, some spending the night outside, anxious not to miss out on the refugee registration exercise in July and August 2004, the first to be conducted in two years.
“I arrived here two years ago, with my husband,” says Tina, who claims to be 20 years old. Dressed in a simple t-shirt and a wrap of coloured cloth, with her nails carefully painted, she seems even younger.
“We lived in a small village in Lofa County [northwestern Liberia],” Tina explains. “When the fighting began, we fled into the bush. I lost my parents back there.” She lowers her eyes as she tells her story.
Prince, their child, was born in the medical centre at the Lainé refugee camp in early 2003. Tina’s pregnancy and delivery went smoothly, she says, “because everyone in the camp was very kind and they really looked after me”.
Tina is officially a refugee, her status confirmed by the blue bracelet that UNHCR staff have placed around her wrist. As a refugee, she benefits from UN protection, food rations, free medical care and a return ticket for Liberia under a voluntary repatriation programme that began in October 2004.
But while Tina is eligible for this programme, the same does not apply for Prince, who was born after the last refugee registration exercise, or for Angela, Tina’s aunt.
“My husband left the camp to prepare for our return to the village,” explains Tina. “When we left, we left everything behind. I’ve no idea what happened to our house.”
Tina only wants one thing: to go back home, cultivate her plot of land and teach her son the sounds and colours of the bush. But she acknowledges her dream is on hold for the time being.
“I want to go back, but my husband warns that it is not time yet, that fighters from LURD are still there. That makes me afraid.”
LURD, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, is a former rebel movement which took up arms against ousted President Charles Taylor.
It is meant to have disarmed, but remains a powerful force in some parts of Liberia, including the northwestern county of Lofa, where Tina comes from.
In January 2005, two months after 5,000 LURD fighters in Lofa county surrendered their guns to UN peacekeepers, the UNHCR had still not declared the area safe for refugees to return to.
Tina’s husband had asked Angela to go to join the other refugees at Lainé, one of the more recent camps set up in this part of Guinea to provide Tina with some company while he was away.
Refugee children in Laine camp.
Credit: IRIN |
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“It is better here than in the village,” says Angela. “When they began to start firing, I hid in the bush, but my husband was killed right in front of me. I was too afraid to leave on my own. I waited a long time. I was so hungry I ate bananas that were not yet ripe. When the fighters had left, I went back into the house. They had taken everything.”
Angela says she came to Laine camp to look after her niece, so that she would be able to get back to the village whenever she wants. “But it’s not easy” she says. Tina will have to lie about Angela's status so that her Aunt can get a refugee's food ration.
“We will say that I’m a refugee, that I fled the rebels who are always there,” she explains, without complete conviction. “I know how that goes. Many people have lost their refugee cards, you hear a lot of stories,” adds Angela, shooting nervous glances around her.
In June and July 2004, there were angry protests by camp residents in the three other refugee camps in the Nzérékoré region - Kola, Kouankan and Nohna - when UNHCR officials tried to carry out a census of the people who were there.
Refugees threw stones at UNHCR officials when they arrived in the camps. In Kola, the WFP depot, where sacks of bulgur wheat are stored, was looted.
According to the UNHCR, these problems arose because some refugees in the camps were unregistered. Provisional figures compiled by the end of October showed that 25 per cent of the population which had registered as refugees in the three centres in 2002 had already quit the camps.
Like Tina, many women and children stayed on, while their the men went back to Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire to prepare their families’ return or try to earn a bit of cash.
“Women prefer to stay here because they can go to school, their fevers can be cured without payment and there are always ways of getting some food,” says Tina.
She tells how some women have little choice but to sell part of their food ration in the village markets so they can get money to buy soap, clothes, fish and other items not provided by the UN agencies.
“Of course, some of them will get into prostitution sometimes. They don’t have enough money and they want to help their husbands,” Tina adds, picking at her cloth, upset by the confession.
“There isn’t much choice, but at the same time what is better? To go back now? I will lose the aid I get at the moment when they take us back.”
The UNHCR began a voluntary repatriation programme at the end of October. Over a period of several months, it is committed to helping the refugees who go back, providing them with food and other supplies. This aid is precious for the refugees, many of whom lost everything when they fled.
It is the turn of Tina, Angela and Prince to go into the warehouse. The small child has gone back to sleep again and will not hear the verdict of UNHCR’s protection officer.
“Your aunt came here of her own accord and will not get refugee status because she is not a refugee,” he tells Tina. Then he asks Tina: “Madame, where is your husband?”
Tina does not lie, explaining that her husband left for the village to sort out their house, preparing the way for the whole family’s return when things got better.
The UNHCR man notes the changes: ‘Father of the family missing, one more child to be added to the list.’ Tina keeps her card. She will have to share her ration of bulgur wheat and oil with her aunt.
"We will have less now," says Tina ruefully. “But we have to keep trying”.
[ENDS]
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