Topic: The Rights and Status of Refugees
Country: Liberia
Delegate Name: Lillian Deering
School: Troy High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Liberia position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
Refugee crises are among the world’s never-ending struggles, with 25.4 million refugees displaced from their native countries as of June, 2018. Citizens are driven out of their homes as the result of extreme violence, often from political competition within a nation’s government or from the brutality of war on their state. Persecution of minority groups, too, forces individuals, over half of whom are under 18 years old, to flee in search of a safe haven. However, struggles rarely cease when refugees cross the border; persons may find themselves without resources to survive in a new nation and may be denied the permission or granted refugee status in order to stay legally. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees focuses on providing assistance and creating means of repatriation to such stateless individuals.
Côte d’Ivoire is heavily disturbed at the perilous status of refugees. As representatives of the UNHCR reported in 2015, the “main populations of concern in Côte d’Ivoire… are Ivorians… who fled Côte d’Ivoire during the post-election violence in 2010-2011 and have returned; stateless people,… and refugees, mainly from Liberia.” The refugee population is comprised mainly of citizens of Liberia, who came in the wake of civil wars to escape both violence and punishment for serving as mercenaries, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic, among others. Côte d’Ivoire intends to allow the refugees to inhabit the nation, but focus on their voluntary repatriation to their own homes. As well as incoming foreign refugees, the nation is concerned, too, by the still-displaced Ivorians who left the country as a result of the violence of the second Ivorian civil war. Côte d’Ivoire has the greatest population of statelessness in West Africa, with over 40,000 refugees. The nation is intent on the repatriation of these citizens to their country in order to regain the stability of the social, political, and economic systems. In conjunction to the act of the UNHCR in 2014, Côte d’Ivoire is “dedicated to protecting the rights of stateless people, as well as eradicating statelessness by 2024.”
Côte d’Ivoire is committed to alleviating the burden of both refugees themselves and the nations that receive them, and is particularly intent on cooperating with other West African delegates. We believe the strongest force for change that can be achieved in the upcoming sessions is an administration of education on the issue, its effects, and possible remedies. As of August 2018, Côte d’Ivoire’s Ivorian National Institute of Statistics has been working with the UNHCR in order to launch a survey intended to map statelessness in the nation with the purpose of better understanding and combating it. We look forward to collaborating with fellow representatives to improve the state of the refugee crisis and make our nation a better one with such support.
