MONROVIA – Liberia’s proud tradition of welcoming strangers is colliding with the hard limits of its own capacity. Prominent lawyer Tiawan Saye Gongloe has weighed in on the government’s decision to receive 1,200 foreigners transferred from the United States. He does not argue that Liberia should shut its doors to people in genuine need. Instead, he asks whether a struggling nation can house, feed, and protect them responsibly. Gongloe recalls a proud history of refuge stretching from the Biafra war to Southern Africa’s liberation struggles. He notes that Liberians themselves once fled abroad and were taken in. Yet such generosity, he warns, must always be matched by the means to sustain it, as THE ANALYST reports.
Prominent Liberian lawyer Tiawan Saye Gongloe made the argument in a commentary on the government’s decision to receive 1,200 foreigners transferred from the United States. He said Liberia has a long and honorable tradition of welcoming people facing difficult conditions in their own countries.
That tradition, he wrote, is consistent with the very idea on which Liberia was founded, as a place of refuge for formerly enslaved and free-born people of African descent. The question, he argued, is not whether Liberia should remain welcoming, but whether it now has the capacity.
A History Of Refuge
Gongloe recalled that Liberia received thousands of Nigerians during the Biafra war of the 1960s and later gave refuge to Sudanese fleeing conflict. He said the country also hosted Africans during the continent’s independence and liberation struggles.
He remembered students from Angola, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Uganda studying at the University of Liberia, Cuttington University, and various high schools. Liberia, he added, has welcomed people from outside Africa as well.
Liberians As Refugees
Gongloe noted that Liberians themselves later became refugees. Since 1980, he wrote, military rule, political persecution, and civil conflict forced many to seek safety abroad.
The United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and many African countries opened their doors to Liberians, he said. The nation therefore cannot reasonably reject people simply because they face difficult circumstances elsewhere.
The Question Of Capacity
The real concern, Gongloe argued, is capacity rather than willingness. In earlier periods, he said, Liberia had a greater ability to provide basic services for both citizens and strangers.
Today the country faces serious challenges of unemployment, food insecurity, inadequate healthcare and education, poor housing, limited electricity, and inadequate access to clean water. Many of those being transferred, he noted, are coming from a far better socioeconomic environment than the one they will encounter.
Generosity And Means
The question, Gongloe concluded, is not whether Liberia should close its doors. It is whether the country can responsibly provide decent living conditions, healthcare, housing, security, and opportunity without worsening the hardship already faced by ordinary Liberians.
Liberia should remain a welcoming country, he said. But humanitarian generosity, he insisted, must be matched by humanitarian capacity.