No latrines or clean drinking water for refugees in Ghana

The disused school sheltering some 200 refugees who fled across the border from Togo to Ghana has no doors, windows or even latrines, and some people are complaining about snakes and mosquitoes at night. Avoeme lies around seven km inland from Aflao, the Ghanaian border town that adjoins Togo's seaside capital Lome. Thousands of people fled into Ghana in the violence that followed Togo’s disputed 24 April presidential election. “We have to wash in peoples’ homes, there’s no electricity, no drinking water, no latrines. It’s hell,” the mother of two toddlers told IRIN. “And we’re at the mercy of snakes and mosquitoes.” The abandoned school set on swampy land with a few coconut trees, has a huge grass yard, the size of a football pitch, which is currently littered with empty plastic bags that say “Pure Water.” Around the compound are five large empty classrooms. “About 20 people sleep in each classroom and the rest sleep out on the grass,” said a young teacher who asked not to be identified. “We need food and mattresses, and clean water and money, because it’s all very well to be given food but you can’t cook it without money”. A team from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) was in the area on Thursday carrying out a needs assessment survey. A UNHCR official in Ghana, Needa Jedu-Hoayh, told IRIN by telephone that “local communities have been providing a lot of assistance and are doing very well, but we must evaluate exactly what needs to be provided.” A royal welcome The local chief in Aflao, King Togbe Fiti, has opened up his palace and his chiefdom to the refugees from Togo. Scores of them are being sheltered in his rambling compound and many more are being put up in the homes of his subjects. The chief, a relative youngster who is in his 40s, is not happy with the international community. Neither are the older grey-haired members of his court. They believe the UN should have stepped in to stop the trouble and prevent the refugee exodus. “What’s the point of playing doctor after a death? Prevention is better than healing. That is my message to the United Nations,” one of the elders told IRIN. The king, clad in white, pledged to guarantee the safety of the 50-odd Togolese refugees currently living under his roof. “I am giving shelter to these people who were entrusted to me by the authorities. They are under my responsibility. Their safety is my concern,” he told IRIN. At the royal compound and the nearby abandoned school, there are mothers and children, old people and youngsters. All fled their homes in pro-opposition neighbourhoods of Lome over the last two weeks, fearing reprisals by security forces loyal to the ruling party of the newly sworn-in president, Faure Gnassingbe. Furious protesters threw up barricades on 26 April when Gnassingbe was declared winner of a vote his opponents said was rigged to allow him to take over from his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled the small West African country for 38 years. Around 100 people were killed and 2000 hurt, according to diplomats and aid groups, when security forces moved in to put down the protests.

Togo

More refugees appear daily More than 24,000 people dashed to Benin and Ghana, and an unknown number are internally displaced within Togo. “Every day we discover new pockets of refugees,” said the UNHCR’s Fati Kaba. “Some people have gone home, but others even slipped across the border at night in fear of being arrested because they were known opposition supporters.” While a few hundred of the 11,000 refugees in Ghana have returned home since last weekend, people are continuing to trickle into Benin, which on Thursday launched an urgent appeal for US $4.97 million to help the homeless. “As long as Faure’s in power we won’t go home,” said one of a group of young men sheltering at the old school in Awoeme, who previously worked as teachers, taxi-drivers, tailors and carpenters in pro-opposition neighbourhoods in Lome such as Be. “They’re still looking for us back home,” said Arnold, a young welder, referring to police. At the palace compound, a woman refugee, living in a small room with her four children and a cousin, said, “I came as soon as the border was opened after the vote because soldiers were doing a lot of shooting in my neighbourhood.” "We are not going home" But her 14-year-old was unhappy. He shed a tear when he spoke to IRIN. “I’m bored, I don’t know anyone here and I want to go to school,” he said. In the yard an 85-year-old woman said she too fled Lome’s Be neighbourhood after seeing murder committed before her very eyes. “I saw three young people die in front of me, shot by soldiers," she said. "It was horrible.” “Life may not be easy here but we aren’t going home,” she added firmly. Emile, who ran a training centre for orphans in Lome, said he fled after the security forces came looking for him three times in a row simply because opposition protesters had dug a trench in front of his house. “They forced my wife during my absence to fill in the trench and threatened to rape her,” he said. Emile, like some of the other refugees in Ghana, is paying for a rented room to stay in. Others have found lodgings with their relations. Some of the refugees cross the border to go into Togo to work during the day, but sleep in Ghana at night. In Benin meanwhile, the government launched an appeal Thursday for US $4.97 million to help cover the needs of an estimated 20,000 Togolese refugees for six months. According to the UNHCR, only 13,000 have so far crossed the border. The Benin government said half of the refugees were children and 108 of them unaccompanied minors. It also said that hundreds of pregnant and breast-feeding women needed assistance. "This is a humanitarian situation which is beyond the capacity of Benin," Rogatien Biaou, the Foreign Affairs Minister, told a press conference.