The inequality in the treatment of refugees by the countries that receive them leads JRS Portugal (Jesuit Service to Refugees) to launch, on World Refugee Day, June 20, the campaign “Solidarity without Borders, a World without Barriers” so that refugee reception policies are fairer.
To mark this Day, JRS Portugal will present the documentary “The last frontier”, by André Carvalho Ramos (journalist for CNN Portugal), in the Salão Nobre of Colégio Almada Negreiros, in the Campus de Campolide of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The documentary shows Europe's different policies for refugees.
“With the war in Ukraine, solidarity knew no borders. The world came together to break down barriers and ensure that people fleeing the atrocities of conflict could find the peace and security they so richly deserve in Europe. But we must not forget that so many other nationalities coming from countries like Sudan, Syria or Eritrea, who are also fleeing wars, conflicts and humanitarian crises, are forced to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean, to live in conditions deplorable people, blocked at the gates of Europe, without dignity or rights. We believe that everyone deserves to be welcomed and protected, regardless of their nationality or origin”, says André Costa Jorge, director of JRS Portugal and coordinator of the Refugee Support Platform (PAR).
The stories of Ghalia Taki and Siraj Ibrahim portray this inequality. Ghalia Taki, from Damascus (Syria), was arrested three and a half months pregnant at Lisbon airport in 2014, with her husband, son and mother for having false documents.
The family applied for asylum in Portugal, but integration was very difficult and slow, as asylum seekers have no social support.
In 2015, she started working at the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS Portugal) as an interpreter and cultural mediator. She is currently coordinator of the interpretation and cultural mediation department and of the Bolsa de Intérpretes project, which has 107 interpreters in more than 27 different languages to help other refugee families.
Siraj Ibrahim, 42, is a native of Eritrea, from where he fled in 2005 to Sudan, where he stayed for a year. In 2006, he went to Libya where he stayed for five years.
When the internal conflict began in Libya in 2011, he fled again to Tunisia, asked for asylum and spent eight months in the refugee camp called “Shusha”, waiting for a safe country to welcome him where he could live with dignity.
He came to Portugal in 2011 under the Reinstallation program, and since 2015 he has been an interpreter at JRS. He currently has Portuguese nationality.
In addition to the awareness campaign and screening of the documentary “The Last Frontier”, from 22 to 25 June, the exhibition “Vizinhos do Lado” can also be seen, which brings together 21 portraits of Afghan families.
These portraits result from the experience of emergency support in a reception center during the initial months of the Afghan families' journey of integration.
The time spent with the families and technicians at the Center provided the necessary rapprochement for these stories to be shared in the first person and written by the Afghan journalist Farkhunda Kargar, welcomed through a humanitarian rescue operation.
The photograph is by the Portuguese photographer Vasco Passanha.
The exhibition will be on display in various locations, starting with Largo do Cabeço de Bola, in Lisbon. It will be part of the Festival Bairro em Festa.
Eurostat revealed in 2021 that 630.550 people were waiting for a response to their asylum application in the European Union. Of these, 1.540 applied for asylum in Portugal, mostly from Afghanistan, Morocco, India and Gambia.
JRS PORTUGAL
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS – Jesuit Refugee Service) is an international organization of the Catholic Church, founded in 1980, under the responsibility of the Society of Jesus. Its mission is to “Accompany, Serve and Defend” refugees, forcibly displaced persons and all migrants in particularly vulnerable situations. He has been in Portugal since 1992.
JRS Portugal provides services in Lisbon and Porto in the areas of legal support, mental and physical health, housing search, professional training, language teaching, interpretation, among others. Last year, it served 23.386 people of different nationalities, mainly from Ukraine (24%), São Tomé and Príncipe (21%), Guinea-Bissau (12%), Afghanistan and Angola (both with 6%). Training was given to 196 people and 188 migrants found work. Of the 537 people welcomed, 253 are Afghans and 213 are Ukrainians. Since 2018, it has been the entity that coordinates the PAR (Refugee Support Platform) network.
PAR (Refugee Support Platform)
PAR is a civil society network with more than 350 Portuguese organizations that emerged in the summer of 2015 to respond to the global refugee crisis. Through its partnerships, it intends to facilitate the reception and integration process of asylum seekers and refugees in Portugal.
In 2021, it supported the reception of 279 Afghans, under the Afghanistan humanitarian admissions program, through volunteers at the JRS Reception Centers and Hospitality Communities that, dispersed across the country, supported the path of integration of these citizens into their local communities , always with a view to their autonomy. In 2022, 253 Afghans were welcomed.
Volunteers from the PAR Hospitality Communities also supported the integration process of some of the 213 people from Ukraine who fled the war and were welcomed by JRS Portugal in its reception structures.
O Sul Informação has been part of PAR since 2015.
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