Over 10,000 refugees currently living in Ghana have initiated a move to climax this year's World Refugees Day with a cultural display.
Sports, art and culture, vocational skills, music and dance, among other activities, would be displayed at the festival to be staged at the National Theatre.
The organisers of the festival say the festival centres on three key pillars: to unearth talents at the various refugee camps, empower them with required vocation and skills, and improve their livelihood.
Addressing a news conference at the Ampain Refugee Camp in the Western Region to announce the festival, the event co-ordinator, Jacob Ahoua, said the festival will create a platform for refugees in Ghana to voice out their concerns and show to the world the capacity they have in contributing to development wherever they find themselves.
In addition, he said, the refugees in Ghana have talent despite their predicaments, and will want to showcase it to the world.
Again, Ahoua said members of the various refugee camps, largely displaced by war, will use the festival as an avenue to bond, practice and maintain their individual cultural heritage.
He said the celebration of the festival, currently on a pilot stage, will eventually become an annual event capable of helping them to be financially independent. They will use their talents to communicate the message of peace to the world.
The president of Performing Arts Teachers Association of Ghana (PATAG), Johnson Edu, who initiated the concept, has also volunteered to train the unskilled among the refugees ahead of the festival to unearth their talents.
He described the festival as a window of hope for all refugees in and outside the country. "This is going to be the window that will showcase the talents in various camps. The idea could equally be replicated in other countries where refugees live,” he stressed.
He urged civil society organisations and the UNHCR, in particular, to support the festival to become an annual event in the country.
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