Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire sign agreement on repatriation of refugees
Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on Thursday signed an agreement for the voluntary repatriation of Ivorian refugees in Ghana.
The signing ceremony was performed by Mr Daniel Kablan Duncan, Foreign Minister for La Cote d’Ivoire, Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, Ghana’s Foreign Minister and Ms Sharon Cooper, the UNHCR representative in Ghana and witnessed by visiting President Alassane Ouattara and his Ghanaian counterpart, John Evans Atta Mills.
The document provides the political and social framework of refugees who took refuge in Ghana after the crisis in the Ivorian general elections last year.
President Ouattara has brokered a similar agreement with Liberia and on course with the same mission with other nations that Ivorian refugees took refuge.
The Ivorian President is on his first official visit to Ghana after his inauguration last May which was attended by President Mills.
There are currently about 18,000 Ivorian refugees in Ghana who include former ministers, political and military officers.
They are in camps at Ampain; Agyeikrom near Elmina; Accra in the Greater Accra Region and Fatenta in the Brong Ahafo Region.
Much as the refugees would want to return home, it is feared that they do not have a safe passage as conditions may not be conducive at home.
The tripartite agreement would therefore provide a safe passage home following the normalization of public institutions after the investiture of the Ivorian President.
President Ouattara in his inaugural speech last May promised a national reconciliation and reconstruction to restore confidence in the country that was politically polarized and nearly ravaged by post-election crisis.
The Ouattara administration has since created the Commission on Dialogue, Truth and Reconstruction to work towards lasting peace while international sanctions placed on the country which population is about 20 million are being lifted.
On the military and the security front, President Ouattara’s administration is redeploying the services of police and gendarmes to guard the entire Ivorian territories while road blocks during the crisis have also been reduced.
Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, Ghana’s Foreign Minister, in an interview gave the assurance that the concerns raised by the Ivorian refugees on their safe passage back home were being addressed.
Source: GNA