Refugee Week 2023 – Compassion

Refugee Week has always formed a crucial moment in Kazzum’s calendar, giving us the chance to connect across our programmes to support the wellbeing of young refugees and asylum seekers and undocumented young people.

In 2014 we were given funding that enabled us to take workshops into schools across London and Kent aimed at educating students on the plight faced by refugees and migrants. Each year we have been grateful to the young people who have shown empathy and compassion beyond expectation, and who have engaged with the materials we have developed with sensitivity and interest. Our school workshops and activity materials are all available online and this year we will be concentrating on live events and creative workshops with refugee partner organisations. We are deeply aware that the issues affecting refugees and migrants are as desperate as ever and there is an ever-greater need for solidarity and advocacy. 

Refugee Week 2023 has come at a point when UK migration politics are fraught with policy changes and potential human rights infringements. Major events happening internationally have also caused a dramatic increase in human displacement and escalating media discourse reflects this. Over the past year, the world has seen the deepening of a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, outbreaks of conflict in Ukraine and Sudan, persecution in Hong Kong and countless other atrocities forcing displacement upon millions of people. The climate crisis will be another factor in uprooting communities from their homeland over successive generations.  

In early 2023 the UK’s ‘Illegal Migration’ Bill was introduced in parliament, aimed at stopping people from arriving in the UK via small boats. The Bill has been written up to enable the Home Office to instantly reject asylum claims from those that make their way to the UK by irregular means. Those that do could find themselves detained for an unspecified length of time or deported to a third country considered ‘safe’ by the UK. Quite apart from the fact that if this Bill were passed it would leave thousands of people vulnerable and unable to access internationally recognised protection, there is also very little evidence to suggest that it would deter desperate people from arriving on the shores of the UK. Government officials are now debating and amending this Bill, and it is important to use events like Refugee Week to turn a spotlight on where compassion should be employed when thinking of the people who seek refuge in the UK.  

Refugees and Migrants enrich our culture in so many ways, and the UK has a long-standing history of being welcoming towards anyone driven away from their homeland. At Kazzum our Pathways project has been running for 21 years and we have developed strong relationships with partner organisations that support young migrants and refugees. Our current ‘Creative Wellbeing’ workshops are a series of weekly creative workshops with young people at organisations such as Young Roots, Baytree Centre, CARAs and Shpresa. These ongoing sessions focus on self-reflection and confidence-building along with opening doors to different ways of expression through art and leading to a community celebration in October 2023. Meanwhile, our Brighter Futures group are at the Museum of Home in East London this week, performing poetry and displaying artwork at an event devised in aid of their campaign for housing rights for young migrants.  

We are proud to stand alongside refugees and migrants, and to oppose the anti-immigration sentiment that can pervade in the media. Refugee Week’s 2023 theme of ‘Compassion’ is as simple and powerful as it gets in the fight for refugee and migrant rights. For this week and every other week, we must be compassionate.