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Mia Farrow has been visiting East Africa, including Djabal refugee camp in Chad, where thousands of displaced Darfuri refugees still live, as part of a trip with our partners at UNICEF.
She tweeted the following photo which summarizes the UN Refugee Agency’s mission, straight from the people we serve:
Be sure to follow Mia on twitter for more updates from her travels!
Do you think these refugees deserve our attention? Order a $5 Blue Key today to show your support!
The UN Refugee Agency – a two-time Nobel Peace Prize winner – provides protection, shelter, emergency food, water, medical care and other life-saving assistance to more than 36 million people worldwide, who have been forced to flee their homes due to war and persecution. When possible, UNHCR helps refugees and other displaced people return to their homes voluntarily, safely, and with dignity.
Since its formation by the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 1950, UNHCR has helped an estimated 50 million refugees restart their lives. Today, with a staff of more than 6,650 people, the agency is the lead humanitarian organization on the scene in 126 countries around the world.
In this video from TEDxRideauCanal, James Milner advocates an integrative approach to solving the plight of millions of refugees who wait on average 18 years in refugee camps.
James Milner has been a researcher, practitioner and policy advisor on issues relating to refugees, peacebuilding, African politics and the United Nations system.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Carleton University. Before joining Carleton, he was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto (2006-08) and a Trudeau Scholar at the University of Oxford (2003-06). Since 2003, he has also been Co-Director of an international research project at the University of Oxford focusing on the plight of refugees in situations of prolonged exile in Africa and Asia.
He has undertaken field research in Burundi, Guinea, Kenya, India, Tanzania and Thailand, and has presented research findings to stakeholders in New York, Geneva, London, Ottawa, Bangkok, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and elsewhere. He has worked as a Consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India, Cameroon, Guinea and its Geneva Headquarters.
His published work includes: Refugees, the State and the Politics of Asylum in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), co-author of UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection into the 21st Century (Routledge, 2008), co-editor of Protracted Refugee Situations: Political, Human Rights and Security Implications (UN University Press, 2008).
You can be part of the solution, too. Get a Blue Key today to help raise awareness for refugees.
Alexa is not your average kid. She knows that there are other little girls, just like her, living in refugee camps around the world, and she wants to help. She knows that when her mom was her age, she was a Vietnamese refugee and able to resettle in America.
So Alexa decided to raise money for the UN Refugee Agency and World Refugee Day, an annual celebration of the strength, resilience, and contributions of the world’s refugees. Along with her friend Ava, Alexa set up outside her neighborhood Super Stop and Shop in Simsbury, TC one Saturday morning and asked grocery shoppers to donate to the lifesaving programs of the UN Refugee Agency. In one morning, the girls raised over $250!
Alexa wrote a letter to her classmates, entitled Kids Can Help the World, and asked them to join her by bringing spare change to class or some to the local Stop and Shop with their parents.
When we started the Blue Key campaign, Alexa and her mother were two of the first people we wanted to tell about this new way to show their support. After receiving her Blue Key, Alexa wrote us the following note:
Thank you for letting me know about the Blue Key Campaign. I’m handing out lots of fliers at school to students and the faculty. I love wearing my blue key! I have also ordered a few more to share with my friends as we ask for donations in three locations this year. I hope that we raise lots of money for the refugees!
Love, Alexa
UNHCR is lucky to have advocates like Alexa, Ava, and the Blue Key Champions, who are willing to donate their time and money to help the millions of refugees worldwide.
Would you like to be an advocate for refugees? Join the Blue Key Champions to be the voice for the 43 million refugees around the world.
“I have won a new life.”
Farouq Ali is the father of four and a refugee from Iraq. He had completed two university degrees and was working as a manager for a local firm in Baghdad, Iraq, when he began receiving death threats from local militants. One day he received a text on his mobile phone: “We will put an end to your life tomorrow.” The same day, six people were murdered as part of sectarian violence in his neighborhood.
Farouq fled with his family to neighboring Syria, where, with the help of UNHCR, the family was selected for resettlement to Liechtenstein. When that application stalled, he chose to be resettled in the United States. Farouq now lives in the Massachusetts town of Lowell, where he works with other resettled refugees.
“The last country I was thinking of was the USA, actually,” he said of his adopted home. “But Europe closed all its doors for Iraqis… I don’t know why.” Leaving Iraq was a huge blow, he says, but he does not consider himself “a big loser.” “On the contrary I have won a new life.”
Show your support for refugees like Farouq and his family with a Blue Key.
On average, refugees endure 17 long years living in refugee camps before returning home or resettling to another country. They leave their friends, their loved ones, and all the comforts of home behind because they have no other option.
If you already have your Blue Key, please help us spread the word:
- Send an email to your friends with our Blue Key Email tool
- Post a note of support to our Facebook Page
- Encourage your Facebook friends to Get a Blue Key
- Tweet your support with the #bluekey hashtag
- Become a Blue Key Champion
Last week you probably noticed quite a bit of attention on a small Swiss town named Davos. Heads of state, business leaders, academics and international VIPs convened on Davos for the annual World Economic Forum. With so many influencers in one place, the UN Refugee Agency took this opportunity to give them an experience they will never forget:
The Refugee Run is an intensive simulation that evokes some of the enormous emotional upheaval of being forced to flee your home and everything that you know – becoming a refugee.
Every year, war and natural disasters drive millions of people to flee their homes. UNHCR and the Crossroads Foundation team up in Davos to offer the Refugee Run to WEF participants – this offers them a chance to walk a mile in the shoes of refugees.
This year Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, posted the following clip from his Refugee Run:
Here is what Christopher had to say about the experience: The Street Theatre from Hell:
Others may offer cocktail parties, lunches and dinners at Davos, but each year the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tries to give the assembled global elite a taste of hell. Executives who volunteer for the experience — and there are scores of them — cross what looks like a crude police barrier between the snow drifts and suddenly find themselves living the lives of people who are homeless, stateless and bereft not only of their possessions but of their futures. As street theater, this brief, intense “simulation” is convincing enough to be disconcerting. I found myself buying a crust of bread with my glasses, and having guards roust me out of a tent at night to shake me down and steal my watch. But the fact is, this show pales by comparison with the brutalization most of the world’s 43.3 million refugees have experienced as they flee their homes into the hands of governments that are at best only grudgingly hospitable and at worst downright savage. In most cases, the only real refuge, and the only real hope for these people, lies with the UNHCR, but even in the best-run camps, they may enter a kind of limbo that lasts, on average, a dozen years before they can return home or be resettled permanently in a third country.
See photos of more WEF attendees experiencing Refugee Run 2012.
Put yourself in their shoes: Show support for refugees with a $5 Blue Key!
Only VIPs attend the World Economic Forum each year, but every American has the opportunity to imagine themselves in a refugees’ shoes at any time. Getting your Blue Key lets others know that refugees will not be forgotten and that 1 refugee is too many.
Indianapolis Colt Dwight Freeney was featured on Good Morning America this week, cooking up classic game-day fare while asking viewers to give generously to refugees who won’t have a Super Bowl feast this Sunday.
Freeney joins forces with Gridiron Girls 4 Africa (GG4A), UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and USA for UNHCR in their lifesaving efforts in the Horn of Africa.
Freeney was moved by the effects of the humanitarian crisis that reached an alarming tipping point over the summer when the United Nations declared a famine in six regions of Southern Somalia.
Today, the UN downgraded the crisis in Somalia from “famine” to “humanitarian emergency,” signaling improvements but highlighting the continuing needs of over 9.3 million people across the Horn of Africa who still desperately need assistance.
If you’d like to join Dwight in helping the Horn of Africa, please visit GridIron Girls 4 Africa or text GRIDIRON to 80000 to donate $10 to the UN Refugee Agency, which can provide therapeutic food so that a malnourished child may recover.
Video: Dwight Freeney visits Good Morning America:
Can you help refugees by getting your $5 Blue Key today?
If you already have your Blue Key, please help us spread the word:
- Send an email to your friends with our Blue Key Email tool
- Post a note of support to our Facebook Page
- Encourage your Facebook friends to Get a Blue Key
- Tweet your support with the #bluekey hashtag
- Become a Blue Key Champion
After being a dedicated supporter of USA for UNHCR for years, Jennifer Gerlock decided to share her passion with the readers of her blog. Soon thereafter we were lucky to have her officially join us as part of the Blue Key Champion team.
What does it mean to be a refugee? To be forced from your home, family and everything you have ever known?
As a mother, my most haunting dreams are ones where there is a devastating occurrence and I am forced to flee with my children. We have no money, no food and nowhere to go. I am powerless and it devastates me.
Read the full post on her blog, Hip As I Wanna Be.
Can you join Jennifer in helping the world’s most vulnerable people by getting your $5 Blue Key today?
Jennifer Gerlock is a partner at Want 2 Grow Marketing, a boutique PR firm in DC specializing in non-profits, Co-founder of MomzShare.org, a social media addict & tends to run marathons on a whim. Blog: www.hipasiwannabe.com.
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