All posts tagged: refugee

After refugee aid cuts, faith groups help Afghan women connect through sewing

After refugee aid cuts, faith groups help Afghan women connect through sewing

Published by Sam Flores

DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — The Refugee Community Partnership, a mutual aid organization that supports immigrants, used to offer a sewing circle for Afghan women whose families had recently been resettled in the Triangle region of North Carolina. But the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to refugee admissions as well as refugee-support organizations meant the partnership no longer had the resources or staff to run the program, which included transportation for the women, many of whom do not drive, and daycare for their young kids. Now, two Durham-based congregations have stepped in to fill the gap. The Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and Judea Reform Congregation raised money and sought volunteers to offer these new immigrants a place to improve their sewing skills, meet fellow Afghans and pick up some English skills. Volunteers from the congregations drove the women from their homes to the UU fellowship, where the class has been meeting; arranged for an Afghan class instructor and a translator; and looked after the children. The two congregations also arranged for donations of at least a …

Hope in Exile: Afghan Refugee Children Struggle for Education in Pakistan

Hope in Exile: Afghan Refugee Children Struggle for Education in Pakistan

Published by Sam Flores

Exile doesn’t talk, yet even the dreams of Afghan children don’t stay quiet. The noise of factories in Pakistan can supplant the ringing of school bells in refugee settlements. Empty notebooks are sitting around waiting to be used in what is becoming a more distant future. To thousands of Afghan children, education is now a luxury, something they may wish for but won’t have. In August 2021, my family left Kabul when the Taliban came back to power. We had to leave our home and all that was familiar to us. I was then a high school student, and I wanted to follow my dream of becoming a doctor because I thought education would protect me against the world of confusion. However, the act of going across the border into Pakistan froze this goal. We didn’t find any waiting classes, any teachers, any assurance of the future—only the raw situations of displacement and uncertainty. This isn’t only my case, but also the case of thousands of Afghan refugee children in Pakistan. The National Commission on …

The Ethics of Refugee Protection

The Ethics of Refugee Protection

Published by Jenni Sidey

Around 42.5 million refugees worldwide have been forced to flee their own states and are unable to return because of severe threats to their lives, human rights, or basic needs. Having fled these threats, the vast majority have by no means found protection. Instead, most refugees live either in squalid refugee camps or face destitution in urban areas in regions close to their own states in the Global South. A small minority risk their lives on journeys to reach asylum in the Global North; many thousands lose them. How should states in the Global North (the affluent liberal democracies including the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, and European states) respond to this situation? Some philosophers argue these states should open their borders to accept as many refugees as possible until the point of societal collapse. Other philosophers argue states need not admit a single refugee. Some states have responded with expansive welcome schemes accepting over one million. Other states have erected concrete walls and barbed wire fences. Some citizens march the streets with signs reading “refugees …

The House | Alf Dubs: Labour Is Weakening Refugee Rights – I Had More Success Under The Tories

The House | Alf Dubs: Labour Is Weakening Refugee Rights – I Had More Success Under The Tories

Published by Sam Flores

Lord Dubs (Photography by David Sandison) 11 min read52 min As Lord Dubs leads the charge against the government’s immigration changes, he talks to Sienna Rodgers about his disappointment in Labour, his hopes for rejoining the EU, and why Keir Starmer must step out of his advisers’ shadow Alf Dubs was a 12-year-old boy when the British people, focused on the post-war rebuild, gave Clement Attlee a landslide win. It is one of his earliest political memories. “I was passionately Labour,” he recalls. “I wandered around Manchester looking at the posters and things, because there were no televisions – it was all posters.” His mother had moved to the city, getting a job scrubbing the floors of a restaurant there, after his father died of a heart attack. “My mum had taken me to a boarding house near Blackpool, and the people there said, ‘Go to the town square, the BBC will be broadcasting the results’. So, I rushed off, and the lunchtime score was something like Labour 120, Conservative 30. …

Refugee in my own city: Surviving Tehran’s bombing, with my cat for company | US-Israel war on Iran News

Refugee in my own city: Surviving Tehran’s bombing, with my cat for company | US-Israel war on Iran News

Published by Sam Flores

Sana* is a 27-year-old woman living with her roommate, Fatemeh, in a two-bedroom apartment in western Tehran. The economics master’s student and risk control analyst at an investment firm had already survived the June 2025 Israel-Iran war. When the latest war began in late February, she promised herself she would not run away from the city again. As told to Ariya Farahand.  The night before the war, every piece of news arriving on my phone had two possibilities: Either they strike, or they don’t. I stayed up late, waiting. Previously, the strikes had come around midnight, so I kept watching. When nothing happened, I put on some Persian music, poured myself a drink to take the edge off, and went to bed. I told myself the night had passed without an attack. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list I was wrong. It was 9:40am on February 28 when the first missiles hit Tehran. I was caught between sleep and wakefulness in my apartment in the west of the city. My neighbourhood hadn’t been …

Synagogues mark Refugee Shabbat in a year without refugees

Synagogues mark Refugee Shabbat in a year without refugees

Published by Sam Flores

DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — Over the past five years, members of Judea Reform Congregation have helped resettle 13 refugee families from such countries as Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Many of its volunteers are still caring for them. They recently sent the refugee families a spring food gift basket to celebrate Ramadan, Nowruz and Easter. Welcoming refugees is still a core mission of the synagogue, but no new refugees will be welcomed at the annual Refugee Shabbat commemoration this weekend. With President Donald Trump’s executive order, signed the day of his inauguration, all refugee admissions have been frozen, with the exception of Afrikaners, South African white farmers, of which 2,000 have been resettled across the U.S. Instead, at Friday night (March 13) services, the congregation will hear from the first Latina member of the Durham City Council about the city’s efforts to welcome immigrants. Next month, volunteers from this synagogue will join up with the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham to start a sewing circle for Afghan women who have been resettled in …

refugee status was never ‘permanent from day one’

refugee status was never ‘permanent from day one’

Published by Sam Flores

The UK’s asylum system is being overhauled. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has laid out a series of reforms that will affect refugees seeking safety in Britain. Mahmood argues that these changes – which include removing financial and housing support for asylum seekers who break the law, and offering incentive payments for asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected to return home – will remove “incentives” drawing people to Britain. She says they are necessary as part of a “firm but fair approach” to asylum. One of the headline announcements is to make refugee status temporary, subject to review every 30 months. “Those whose country has now become safe, and therefore no longer require protection, will be expected to return home,” according to the home secretary. Under the current rules, asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status are permitted to stay for five years, after which they can apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Mahmood claims that “this means refugee status is, in effect, permanent from day one”. But this is …

Ex-refugee and former Iraqi president takes over UN’s refugee agency

Ex-refugee and former Iraqi president takes over UN’s refugee agency

Published by Sam Flores

Bahram Salih, the new head of the UN’s refugee agency says that he knows the pain of being ripped from all one knows. The former Iraqi president has just taken over the UNHCR and headed to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya on his first official trip. About 300,000 people from across the region live there after having been uprooted from their homelands by conflict or climate crises. FRANCE 24’s Bastien Renouil spoke to Salih during his trip. Keywords for this article Source link