AFRICANEWS

ChildRights

Cote d'Ivoire

Integration: Loving your neighbour as you love yourself

Children

For the past few months, Cote d'Ivoire has become famous for the sorry state of children within its borders. But now the government of President Laurent Gbagbo seems keen to redeem itself after it agreed to the integration of Liberian refugee children into Ivorian schools.

As if to atone for the recently publicised scandal of child slaves working in cocoa plantations and rising anti-foreigner violence, the government of Cote d'Ivoire earlier this month agreed to enrol 20,000 Liberian refugee children in the country's educational system.

By giving consent to such an exercise, the country not only partly redeems its reputation, but also seems to have taken tentative steps to solve one of Africa's most complex refugee problems. However, it is still early to assess the success of the proposed integration, a project conceived four months ago.

The youngsters were given permission to attend Ivorian primary schools after Service d'aide et d'assistance aux refugies et personnes apatrides (SAARA) - the Ivorian government body that deals with refugees - signed an agreement on September 3 with representatives of several UN agencies. These UN agencies included the High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

The agreement also spelled out how to integrate into Cote d'Ivoire more than 120,000 Liberians who opted not to return home at the end of the voluntary repatriation exercise last year. The UNHCR-organised repatriation exercise, which began in 1997, a year after Liberia's civil war ended, saw more than 200,000 refugees head home. But 120,000 refugees opted not to return home and sought to either stay in Cote d'Ivoire or move to another country. Under international law, UNHCR can choose to repatriate refugees, resettle them in a third country, or integrate them into the host country.

In this case, the UNHCR has chosen the third option. The agency is now preparing to send the 20,000 Liberian youngsters to Ivorian primary schools on September 17, the start of the next academic year.

The children live in the Refugee Reception Zone (Zone d'accueil des refugies), an expansive area that was set aside in western C�te d'Ivoire to host fleeing Liberians. Spread over four districts - Danane, Gioglo, Tabou, and Toulepleu - the zone is more of a giant village than a refugee camp, since the Liberians live side-by-side with local people. Cote d'Ivoire has only one refugee camp, Nicla, which houses 7,500 Liberians. This arrangement is unlike that of their counterparts in Sierra Leone and Guinea, who live in gazetted camps.

The Liberian children were supposed to attend special classes apart from the Ivorians that the UNHCR promised to construct before June of this year. But by the start of September, only 90 of the 321 required classes were ready, presenting a bumpy start to the process. As a result, the Liberians will have to join their Ivorian counterparts in the public schools.

The UNHCR will also provide educational equipment, train teachers, and help to develop English-based curricula, as Liberians are English speakers while Ivorians use French as their language of instruction. The World Food Programme will donate food materials so that don't drop out to search for food. According to Trudy Bower-Pirinis, the WFP's Representative to Cote d'Ivoire, the food, rice, fish, oil, and salt that the WFP will provide is needed because most Ivorian schools do not have canteens for students. The classrooms were not completed on time because of a lack of funds, which threatens to slow, if not derail, the integration project. However, this funding shortfall doesn't come as a surprise. In their meeting last May to discuss the integration area, government and UN officials involved in educational, social protection and refugee issues noticed that funds were low.

Much as donors had indicated their willingness to fund the project, they pointed out that the time between May - when integration was first discussed - and the beginning of the Ivorian academic year in September was too short to effectively start the project. The Ivorian National Bureau for Technical Studies and Development said the whole integration project would cost US$16.2 million. By August, SAARA indicated that it had only received US$1 million, yet it was supposed to construct 321 classrooms, dining halls, sanitation facilities, and 250 houses for the teachers. The US$1 million cannot even meet the expenses of training and paying teachers conversant with Ivorian and Liberian educational systems.

Currently an average Ivorian teacher earns about US$127 per month, money that the cash-strapped government of Laurent Gbagbo has been finding hard to find. That wasn't lost to the stakeholders when they met in May. Michel Amani N'Guessan, the country's Minister of Education, told participants that "Cote d'Ivoire cannot face this situation alone," an observation repeated in the final document. "It is important for UNHCR and the international community to make a formal commitment to support, as long as necessary, the hard-pressed Ivorian government," it read.

But the money hasn't been forthcoming and Ralph Coffi Brouz, SAARA boss, now laments of an "unfortunate beginning." The need to get extra teachers in time is urgent, considering that some of the host districts are already understaffed. Danane needs 63 more teachers to handle the 15,000 Ivorian students currently enrolled in its schools, yet it is expected to take in 6,000 Liberians.

Money aside, the psychology of exile has its price. Some Liberian parents, much as they are for their children's education, see integration as a way of being incorporated into a foreign society and culture. Participants in the May meeting interviewed some parents, who saw the project as the first step in discarding Liberian culture, and thus resent the project for that reason. Other parents believe that they are in Cote d'Ivoire for only a brief time and will soon be leaving either for home or European and North American countries. Hence, they see the project as a distraction.

Such pessimism made one Liberian school superintendent, Morris Turay, say that it is essential to brief the Liberian parents on the project's aims. "Before you can integrate the children, you have to integrate the parents," he told IRIN, the UN's information agency. It is yet unknown how the UN officials - who are adamant that integration simply means "an offer to educate the refugees in the same conditions as Ivorian children" - will change such mind frames.

Analysts have also warned that the integration should boost the welfare of host communities or risk provoking a violent backlash against the Liberian refugees.

During the past two years, intermittent clashes have erupted between Ivorians and Liberians; these could become more frequent and bloodier if locals feel they are being ignored. It was reported during the May gathering that locals and the refugees weren't consulted when the project was conceived, which might prove a costly oversight as the Liberians will be staying in Cote d'Ivoire for the next six years, the period covered in primary schooling.

It is still too early to assess the legal and political ramifications of the integration, but what cannot be ignored is the fact that Cote d'Ivoire has in the past five years become a strongly xenophobic country. Human Rights Watch issued a 70-page report in late August that accused Ivorian government officials of inciting violence associated with xenophobia. The report said that two years of political violence have left the country's socio-political fabric very volatile, with Muslims and immigrants being attacked by locals. Immigrants account for a quarter of the country's 16 million people. "In C�te d'Ivoire we see the kind of intolerance and bigotry that the Racism Conference [the UN World Conference Against Racism, held recently in South Africa] is designed to address," said Peter Takirambudde, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Africa Division.

Age is another issue. Most of the Liberian children are older than their Ivorian peers in the same classroom, mostly because they have been in exile and/or have been fighters. This may affect their learning. Officials have not indicated how they will bridge this age differential, but some analysts have suggested that the authorities either raise the age limit or enrol the older children in vocational institutions. The children are also grappling with how the war has psychologically affected them. In April, teachers on a fact-finding mission about the effect of the war on the Liberian children reported that some of the children are "prone to violence," which the teachers attributed to the after-affects of war. This has also lead to fears that the children could be hard to control, especially when it comes to disciplinary matters.

However, whatever obstacles lie ahead, the integration project is a big plus for a government that has in recent times been embarrassed by shocking scandals related to children. In recent times, the government has established a national inter-agency organisation to combat child trafficking, signed a pact with neighbouring Mali to fight the same menace, and launched a national campaign as required by the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of Child, which Cote d'Ivoire ratified in 1991. Such flurry of activities signals a new beginning on the side of the government. But this new beginning could backfire if these projects are not implemented properly.

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