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Programmes and Operations
Refugee Resettlement Stories |
A glimpse into
refugee resettlement… experiences of Europeans working in
the field
Krenara was barely 10 years old when
her mother rushed her out of the village where she was born,
along with her little brother, just as the soldiers arrived
with guns. They were first looking for men and boys who shared
their own ethnicity, and then those who didn't, determined
to burn down every house and kill any person that stood in
their way. With her father and many of her uncles long gone
in hiding, Krenara joined seven cousins, their mothers and
a few of the boys and men of the family and just ran…
Weeks later, they crossed at last the border into safety in
the country next door. Months passed, and though it had become
clear that she and her family would never be able to return
safely to their own country, they would not be permitted to
stay where they were much longer either. Then, one day word
came that another country had accepted them all, permanently,
for resettlement.
Seven years later, she and her family are citizens of their
new country. Academically, Krenara and her brother are at
the top of their class and their mother has been working already
for quite some time. Besides doing her schoolwork, Krenara
volunteers at a local soup kitchen in her spare time, returning
the favour of helping people in their moment of need. |
| There is still little knowledge in Europe on how resettlement
of refugees works in practice. How does someone who has fled
persecution or death in their own country come to be interviewed
in the country to which they fled and then legally resettled
in a third country? Can everyone apply for resettlement? How
are refugees selected? In what type of circumstances are refugees
selected for resettlement? How are they prepared for their
new life in their new country and what challenges do they
face to rebuild their life once there.
A series of "Refugee Resettlement Stories" will
appear from this month onwards on the ICMC website and that
of our partners. The stories are accounts written by Europeans
who work in the UNHCR-ICMC Resettlement Deployment Scheme,
at UNHCR offices in some 40 countries throughout Africa
and Asia. Every month a story will be published highlighting
various aspects of the resettlement process through the
personal experience of deployees.
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| The following is an interview with Katrien Ringelé,
the Coordinator of ICMC's European Resettlement Network (ERN)
project. A Belgian national, Katrien worked from 2001 to 2003
as an ICMC deployee in Cairo, Egypt at the Durable Solutions
Section of the regional office of UNHCR. In 2004, she worked
in Guinea on a project to identify female-headed households
for resettlement to Australia. |
[ To
read the caption ] |
How did you get involved in working with
refugees and resettlement?
To be honest, this was more by accident. I was living in Cairo
and got in touch with the UNHCR office. Since then, however, all
my work has been in the field of protection with refugees. At
a certain moment I went back to Europe for a year to continue
studying. However I returned to the field and the refugees as
that work simply does not let you go; it marks you somehow. All
the people and their stories you come across, all the pain and
suffering, but also the moments of joy and laughter. You keep
being impressed and moved by what people go through and how extremely
courageous they are; such an energy and will to continue, to fight
and not to give up. It makes you wonder how you would react yourself,
when facing a similar situation.
Where do most of ICMC's deployees work
and in what type of settings?
So far, the majority of deployees are sent to Africa, since this
continent still has the biggest share of refugees. Currently,
there are deployees in all areas with large refugee populations.
Think about the Afghan refugee populations in Pakistan and Iran,
Iraqi refugee populations in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon; the refugee
camps with Bhutanese in Nepal, with Burmese refugees in Thailand,
Bangladesh and India, to name just a few. Latin America hosts
also hundreds of thousands refugees from Colombia.
With regard to the type of settings in which a deployee works,
it varies from place to place. Refugees are people seeking protection
from wars, civil unrest and other conflicts they have left behind;
and they will go virtually anywhere to find protection. Many people
think that all refugees live in refugee camps: but this is not
always the case. Many refugees live in big cities, the so-called
'urban refugees'. Cairo, for example, has attracted hundreds of
thousands of Sudanese as well as thousands of refugees from Somalia,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraqi, Liberia and the
Democratic Republic of Congo. Other refugees live among the local
population in little villages and towns in the more rural areas.
Life is typically extremely difficult for refugees; the refugees
in Cairo face severe hardship, having to look for food and shelter
in an often hostile environment. But generally wherever the refugees
live, that's where the deployees live and work.
Was your work in Cairo a typical assignment
that a deployee would carry out when working for the UNHCR-ICMC
Resettlement Deployment Scheme and can you give a description
of your main tasks?
There is no such thing as a typical assignment for a deployee.
There are of course basic tasks or activities that all deployees
would perform but the assignment really depends on your level
and terms of reference and the operation, the region and the setting
you are working in. It is hard to describe what my tasks were
as there were so many things I got involved in. In the Cairo office,
I became responsible for the day-to-day management of the "Durable
Solutions Section." "Durable Solution" is the term
that is used by the UN and international community to describe
one of the three basic ways in which refugees may one day be able
to restart their lives, either returning to their own country,
integrating into the country in which they found refuge,
or resettling to a third country. For many of the 8.4 million
refugees in the world today, their particular "durable solution"
will become possible only after many years of great peril, deprivation
and vulnerability, and usually even then only with assistance
from the UN, the international community, and/or a nation with
the heart to welcome them.
In our office as in many UNHCR offices worldwide, a certain number
of refugees were scheduled each day for 'durable solutions' interviews.
They came to the office early in the morning and waited until
they were called for the interview.
At this point, their status as refugee had already been determined
in the course of a previous interview or interviews. So during
this second interview, we would assess the situation of the individual
refugee or refugee family: were there any specific problems or
needs and what could be done to solve these or, at least, to alleviate
them? For example, a mother with many children; a little boy who
had lost his family; a man who had lost a leg and needed prosthesis.
In some cases, where necessary medication or treatment is not
available in Egypt or staying in Egypt in itself poses a threat
for the refugee, they are referred for resettlement consideration
in order to address their special needs. The UNHCR resettlement
criteria, of which there are eight, form the basis for the formal
identification of refugees in need of resettlement and the pursuit
of resettlement as the appropriate solution. Resettlement serves
thus as a long-term solution as well as a tool of protection.
[ To
read the caption ]
What were the typical cases you received
in the Cairo office while you were working there?
Among the cases we referred for resettlement consideration in
Egypt, lack of local integration was very often the reason for
refugees to be resettled, as in many other countries in the world.
If it is extremely difficult to find work, send your children
to school and you have to endure a hostile and often discriminatory
environment, there are little to no prospects to build up your
life in the country where you have first found refuge (often called
"countries of first asylum."). But there were other
reasons as well for refugees to be referred for resettlement.
Among the refugees I interviewed in Egypt, there were cases of
severe trauma due to torture and refugees with serious medical
problems that could not be treated in Egypt, and these refugees
were referred for resettlement in order to receive the necessary
treatment they required.
The horror and lives and hopes of many refugees have crossed my
desk. More than a few cases I remember vividly because they were
so distressing and shocking. Fatima, a Somali woman, had given
birth to a child as a result of sexual assault and who had to
keep it secret because otherwise she would be ostracised by her
own family and community. Joseph, a Southern Sudanese boy, had
been abducted by militia men and sold as a slave to work in the
house of a family in the North of Sudan. Jima, an Ethiopian woman,
had been arrested, taken from her house along with her husband
because of their political activities, and detained separately
from her husband, who she never saw again, suffering horrific
treatment and exploitation during her detention.
Have you been in contact with refugee
resettlement programmes of European countries?
I have mainly worked with the refugee resettlement programmes
of the US, Australia and Canada. In Europe, the only resettlement
programme I was in contact with was the Finnish programme, which
has offered resettlement to some Sudanese refugees out of Egypt.
I remember that many of those refugees were first somehow reluctant
and cautious about the idea of settling in Finland. But after
a first group of refugees did travel there, positive feedback
returned to the refugees still in Egypt and their opinion on the
issue changed; the refugees were actually getting quite excited
about the idea of going to Finland. It is of course important
to have a good understanding of the resettlement criteria of the
various country programmes in order to match cases with programmes
in the best way possible.
You then worked in a refugee camp in Guinea,
Africa. Was that a very different experience?
| Yes, a very different experience. Our small team worked
in two of the refugee camps in the South of Guinea; we lived
in the town near the camps and would drive every day to the
camps and back. In Cairo, it was easier to separate work and
private life. Moreover, while life in Cairo is quite comfortable,
in a small town in the jungle in Guinea, the situation is
different: there was not always electricity or water; you
live as well as work together with your colleagues day after
day, and your social life is rather restricted. |
[ To
read the caption ] |
The camps in Guinea where I worked hosted mainly Liberian refugees,
some of whom had been there for more than sixteen years. All too
common, these situations in which refugees find themselves in
exile for years with few rights and unable to fulfil their basic
needs are referred to as 'protracted refugee situations'. Some
of the camp population had returned home, but for others returning
home or remaining in Guinea was not an option because they were
still at risk or had no access to the medical or psychosocial
treatment or care they so desperately needed in the camps. We
were mainly working with 'Women-at-Risk' cases in the camps in
Guinea: female refugees who due to the war in their country had
lost their husbands and were separated from their family and relatives.
Without their traditional family support network, these women
faced extreme hardship, discrimination and social exclusion in
the country of asylum and, in such cases; resettlement was the
only solution to help these women to find safety, stability and
new lives.
The refugee resettlement stories try to bring an insight in the
resettlement process through real-life stories of refugees and
deployees. I hope they will speak to you.
Map of Guinea
showing the location of various refugee camps.
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