Today, 20 June, is World Refugee Day and marks the start of Refugee Week.
The Independent has a proud history of fighting for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. This year, we renewed our campaign and launched a petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis. We continue to call on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about Refugees Welcome, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate, please visit our GoFundMe page.
With more refugees than ever before, as today’s Independent piece discusses, we ask that you spend some time this week hearing refugees’ stories and helping to make change happen for displaced people everywhere.
To follow our editorial on refugee issues all his week and beyond, please visit: https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/refugees
In this incredible Independent TV series, The Independent’s International Correspondent, Bel Trew, shares a vital first hand view of the terrors inside Ukraine. This heart wrenching programme gives victims a voice and allows those outside of Ukraine to be able to understand what is going on.
Click here to view.
Taken from cells, restrained by harnesses and made to board a plane, only to be granted a last-minute reprieve by European judges. The asylum seekers that Boris Johnson wants to send to central Africa tell Independent correspondents May Bulman and Bel Trew their harrowing stories.
‘Like I was going to be executed’: On board the failed Rwanda deportation flight.
View a powerful letter to the editor, co-written in condemnation of the Rwanda scheme and published today here.
Thank you to everyone who has supported Refugees Welcome.
David Cohen, Campaigns Editor of The Independent explains about our campaign here: “In 2015, in wake of the Syrian refugee crisis and the shocking front-page image of a two-year-old boy who drowned on a beach in Turkey, we set up our Refugees Welcome campaign. Readers signed our petition calling on the Government to do more to help and David Cameron announced that 20,000 Syrian refugees would be resettled in the UK by 2020. We relaunched the campaign after the Ukraine invasion earlier this year and the Ukraine petition reached over 100,000 signatures within the first few days.
Our reporters travelled to Ukraine to report the war and to the Ukrainian border to report on the unfolding refugee disaster. We opened a GoFundMe fundraising page and have so far raised over £450,000 to support the basic and humanitarian needs of Ukrainian refugees, with all money going to the Disasters Emergency Committee. The Refugees Welcome campaign goes to the heart of what The Independent is about and its values – which include supporting people whose lives are in danger and have been forced to flee their country and are seeking safe haven in the UK.”
To get involved, please contact your Independent representative.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed when hearing of the hopelesness and terror which refugees around the world experience when fleeing from their homes because of war, famine and threats to basic human rights. It is therefore so important to help organisations which are dedicated to making change happen for these people.
This year, The Independent has partnered with Choose Love, who provide incredible support to refugees. Choose Love does whatever it takes to provide refugees and displaced people with everything from lifesaving search and rescue boats to food and legal advice.
Find out more about Choose Love here.
