World Refugee Day

World Refugee Day aims to honour refugees and celebrate their courage. It also hopes to increase political action to help asylum seekers and refugees globally.

Who celebrates?

Everyone – it is an international awareness day!

How do people celebrate?

• Each year has a different theme – keep an eye on this page to find the theme for 20222.
• The UN has encouraged celebrates such as coffee mornings to raise awareness and donations, if possible, for refugees around the world – these events can be registered on the UN website.

What should I know?

• It is estimated that in 2020 there were 132,349 refugees, 77,245 asylum seeking cases and 4662 stateless persons in the UK
• According to the UN a refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country’ (Article 1, 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees).

How can I support others?

• Encourage celebrations internally and externally
• Ask people about their faith and whether they’d be willing to share what it means to them
• Familiarise yourself with the diversity of ethnicities in your area and how representative your organisation is of the community you serve.

UN: World refugee day: https://www.unhcr.org/uk/world-refugee-day.html

UN: How to celebrate: https://www.unrefugees.org.au/get-involved/fundraise/celebrate-world-refugee-day/

UN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AplbTZNRvxY