Accra-Ghana, Nov 3, GNA – Ms Kelly Clements, Deputy High Commissioner, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has urged the private sector to be involved in addressing challenges associated with displacement in Africa.
She said more forcibly displaced persons represented the most vulnerable communities in Africa, and that individuals had fled their homes because of conflict, violence, persecution or climate change.
The Deputy High Commissioner was speaking at the second edition of the Africa Forum on Displacement: Private Sector Solutions (AFD 2023), in Accra on Thursday.
The AFD 2023 seeks to address the urgent and complex challenges and opportunities of displacement in Africa, and also to encourage private companies to commit at least one per cent of their resources to support forcibly displaced populations.
The AFD 2023 is Co-Convened by the Amahoro Coalition, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and Inkomoko, with support from the Mastercard Foundation and IKEA Foundation.
The first edition was held in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2021 to raise awareness among Africa’s private sector stakeholders about the challenges faced by forcibly displaced people in Africa.
Ms Clements said more emergencies across Africa were causing new crises and further straining resources amidst old crises that continued to fester, with conflicts dragging on, generated by war and conflict, and climate-related events becoming ever more damaging.
“There is an immense need for solutions to help include forcibly displaced and stateless people in the national systems of the African countries, and ensuring that children can learn, adults can work, everybody has access to health care, leaving no one behind,” she added.
Professor Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah, Chairman, Ghana Refugee Board, said the government deemed it important to ensure that the vulnerable in society were taken care of, their rights upheld and that they were not left behind.
“To this end, provision is made through the implementation of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty programme,” he added.
Professor Attafuah said the programme sought to ensure that the most vulnerable in society were supported and that Ghana had always ensured the inclusion of refugees in society.
He said traditional donors and sources of funding of UNHCR were now overstretched, and that it was time for all and sundry to come together and ensure that no one was left behind.
“Ghana has spent a lot of resources in the areas of education, health and indeed many other sectors to ensure that displaced persons are not marginalised,” Prof Attafuah added.
“I am happy to report that the Government waived 90 per cent of the fee for indefinite residence permits for former Ivorian refugees, which is only one example of the many things we do to improve the lot of displaced persons,” he said.
