UK Poverty Post

It’s Refugee Week on the UK Poverty Post

Mar ha ba (Hello in Arabic),

This week is Refugee Week! This week Oxfam and our partners are making a special effort to celebrate the contribution of refugees to the UK through a series of events up and down the country.

Before I tell you about what’s happening this week, first things first, let’s define the word ‘refuge’: a place or state of safety from danger or trouble (say our friends across town at the Oxford English Dictionary). Ever had to escape from trouble? Well, what if escaping meant leaving home. What if it meant going to another country thousands of miles away where you might not speak the language and would face months of uncertainty over your future. It’s a decision that, fortunately, most of us will never have to contemplate. And this week, we want to improve our understanding of the experience and contribution of refugees – people who unfortunately did have to make that decision.

From the Celebrating Sanctuary Music Festival in Birmingham to Student Action for Refugees’ football tournament in Oxford; from refugees reading their poetry in the Oxfam Bookshop in Glasgow to a community celebration in Govanhill; and from the Cross Cultural Community Women’s Choirin Cardiff to Asylum Dialogues, a documentary play, in Swansea: Refugee Week is here! You can find a list of all your local events here and we encourage you to attend.

The United Kingdom has a tradition of offering asylum to those fleeing persecution. On 6 June, we celebrated the defence of our ideals at the D-Day celebrations. Offering sanctuary to those faced with persecution is one of those fundamental ideals. It should be remembered that the UK offered refuge to many facing persecution from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. And though this proud tradition continues, refugees have, over past decade, been the subject of much resentment. Routinely negative portrayal in the media and often-hostile political rhetoric, fuels an image of refugees – similar to that of British people in poverty – as scroungers, who live off the taxpayers’ money.

This week we challenge that portrayal. This week UK Poverty Post will be posting daily blogs from Oxfam staff, refugees and from our partners to shed light on some of the issues facing refugees: from discussing public attitudes towards refugees to analysing how government polices cause destitution, from combating media myths to understanding the contribution of refugees. We hope that you’ll learn something new, but we also want you to challenge us.

Just before I finish, some of you might be wondering why Oxfam cares about refugees in the UK. Oxfam works to end poverty and suffering wherever we find it – no-one, no matter who they are or where they’ve come from, should live in poverty. It’s a fundamental ideal we feel is worth fighting for – both in developing countries, which support more than 80% of the world’s 12 million refugees, as well as here in the UK. As you’ll see later this week, British government policy actually drives the poverty and vulnerability of asylum-seekers – for example, by not allowing them to work irrespective of the length of their application process. Refugee Week is an opportunity to improve public attitudes towards refugees – and if we improve public attitudes, government will improve the policies that affect refugees.

Today we kick off the blogs with Almir, UK Coordinator for Refugee Week, introducing us to this year’s central campaign, Simple Acts. It’s pretty simple: if everyone does at least one simple act, we can make a big change to the way refugees are perceived in the UK. So act now, be the change!