For refugee self-reliance, it takes a global community

Diplomats, CEOs, philanthropists and Nobel Laureates gathered in the Grand Ballroom at One UN Plaza on Thursday evening to consider how they could join forces to help refugees rebuild their lives in a new country.

The event was led by members of the Refugee Self Reliance Initiative (RSRI), a group that includes businesses, charitable foundations, NGOs, and the UNHCR. Director of IRIN News Heba Aly moderated a panel discussion. The coalition also announced its five-year plan to empower 5 million refugees by providing jobs and breaking down barriers to resettlement in host countries.

“We have come to a historic moment,” said Sasha Chanoff, founder of RefugePoint, an organization which brings services to refugees and helps with their resettlement. In his opening remarks, he compared the current movement of refugees to “an unprecedented superstorm” which is creating “urgency and necessity to do things in a different way.”

Since 2015, Europe has struggled to accommodate a large influx of refugees, mainly from Syria, Iraq, and Northern Africa, who have crossed the borders. In the first six months of 2017, over 105,000 migrants and refugees entered the continent. Over 82,000 have crossed into Europe this year, mainly through Italy, Greece, and Spain, according to the UNHCR.

This “superstorm” of migration has spurred the UN to draft the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), a new set of international guidelines for managing refugee resettlement. The document will be introduced at the upcoming UN General Assembly. The document emphasizes the need to share responsibilities between host states, address problems in countries of origin, and assist refugees to build a new life. The plan stresses that the refugee’s desires be heard at every step of this process.

A concrete goal, said Maria Stavropoulou, Acting Deputy Director of the UNHCR Liaison Office in New York, would be the removal of difficulties that refugees and asylum seekers face when trying to find work in their host countries, such as work permits.

“They are so easy to remove,” Stavropoulou said during the panel discussion, “and they make such a huge difference to the lives of asylum seekers and refugees.” She warned, however, that this could only be achieved if governments were willing to adjust legislation.

Robert Hazika, co-founder of the Kampala-based NGO YARID, which educates and provides job training for refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. described his own experience as a refugee from the DRC.

Hazika arrived in Kampala in 2008. “I was the only man in my family, and we had to find a way to make a living. I realized that I needed to get more skills, but that was very difficult.” He added, “This is the situation for so many refugees.”

“Refugees…want to stand on their feet,” Hazika said. “They want to find jobs so that they can support themselves and their families.”

“Refugees have dreams and plans for their life that they would like to fulfill. If they remain in the situation where they cannot be productive, then there is no way that they can reach their goals and dreams,” Hazika said.

Some corporations are already providing jobs to refugees. The IKEA foundation opened a rug factory in Jordan that employs about 200 refugees, and the foundation hopes to eventually hire 200,000 refugees and other vulnerable people. IKEA is also looking for ways to help asylum seekers in Europe through a combination of internships and cultural training. The biggest challenge, said CEO of the IKEA foundation Per Heggenes said, is helping refugees in many African and Middle Eastern countries.

“We need to make it attractive for those [countries] who host the refugees, and integrate them into society,” Heggenes added.

At the end of the event, the hosts asked attendees to fill out a pledge in support of refugee self-reliance. The campaign’s success, Leeson explained, would mean that self-reliance becomes “the rule, not the exception.”

Self-reliance is key for refugees to move “from revival to thriving”, said Dr. Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, which every year offers an award to global humanitarian leaders and gives scholarships to at-risk youth in the Middle East. Afeyan is also a former refugee from Lebanon.

“Immigrants have the physical life experience of taking nothing for granted,” said Afeyan, “They have no roots…and the only place they can drop roots is in the future.”

PHOTO: UNHCR Refugee Camp hosting Syrian Refugees in Irbil, Northern Iraq, in 2013/Flickr.