Box 7: Maria Gaye: A Liberian former refugee in Guinea Maria Gaye was born in 1968, in Grand Gedeh county, Liberia, of two parents also born in Liberia. She fled Liberia in 1990, and spent the next five years in refugee camps in Sierra Leone, then crossing the border to Guinea in 1996, spending a year in Forecariah camp, and travelling to Conakry in 1997. She had no documents in Liberia other than a school enrolment card, which she has lost. In Sierra Leone she had a refugee card from UNHCR and a ration card. In 1997 she received an attestation de refugié from UNHCR and the Guinean Commission nationale d’éligibilité. She has four children: two born in Sierra Leone and two born in Guinea, as well as two grandchildren born in Guinea; though all the children and both grandchildren have birth certificates, they have no nationality documentation in any country. Her husband was killed in the attacks against Sierra Leonean refugees incited by the government of Lansana Conté in 2000-2001. Maria opted for local integration when the cessation clause was invoked and the refugees were given the option to choose between local integration or voluntary repatriation, and completed the application to receive a Liberian passport, on the basis of which she could regularise her status in Guinea. The latest renewal of her refugee card was valid from February to June 2013 and has now expired; she also has a temporary carte de séjour valid for one year – due to expire at the end of June 2014. Just a few weeks from the expiry of that card she had yet to receive a passport, though others who had gone through the same process had done so. Without a Liberian passport, Maria Gaye will be stateless and, in the absence of any procedure for recognising and documenting stateless persons, unable to regularise her status in Guinea. 4.4.3. Former refugees with no continued status Among the former refugees from the three countries where the cessation clauses have been invoked, there is a substantial number who now remain in the country of refuge with no legal status. All have been offered the same options in their countries of refuge in West Africa, according to agreements negotiated between UNHCR, the host government and the Sierra Leonean government: local integration, voluntary repatriation, or exemption from the cessation clauses on the grounds of a need for continued international protection. In Guinea, many Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees applied for continued international protection, on the grounds that they feared to go home for one reason or another, and also citing the attacks on refugees in 2000-2001 by the government of Lansana Conté in which an unknown number of people were killed,208 as well as the difficulty of integrating in Guinea because of the difference in official language and difficulty of getting employment without local qualifications or languages.209 The Guinean government established a system to review these applications, which were first considered by officials, and then appealed to a three-person panel of magistrates. The overwhelming majority of requests for continued protection were rejected, with the rejection letters on appeal giving no reasons for the rejection. Others among both the Sierra Leoneans and the Liberians simply did not apply for any of the solutions offered, rejecting the two options on offer, holding out for resettlement, or not understanding the need to apply for continued protection. Resettlement for the Sierra Leoneans and 208 Human Rights Watch, Refugees Still at Risk: Continuing Refugee Protection Concerns in Guinea, 2001; Decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Communication 249/02 Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (on behalf of Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea) / Guinea, 2006. 209 Interviews, Conakry, June 2014 ; Lacey Andrews Gale, “The Invisible Refugee Camp: Durable Solutions for Boreah ‘Residuals’ in Guinea”, Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, 2008, pp.538-552; « Rapport de mission à Kissidougou du 2 au 6 juin 2013 », Commission nationale pour l’integration et le suivi des refugiés, Conakry : 2013. 63