Dear friend,
This mail starts with an urgent appeal for you to support our direct humanitarian work with 700 Ukrainian refugee families trying to escape increasingly dangerous warzones after waiting over two weeks for visas from the UK Government.
And it ends with a piece about the concept of refugee hosting. | | Urgent Humanitarian Appeal - Ukraine
Please support this vital appeal to help us bring women, children and unaccompanied minors to safety by directly facilitating safe passage and shelter. Donate here or visit this page for other way to give.
The U.K. Government is continuing to frustrate and hold back war refugees as Positive Action in Housing directly assists over seven hundred Ukrainian refugee families to reach the U.K. and Ireland. The Scottish Government agreed to act as a super sponsor for 3,000 Ukrainians and yet the latest data reveals that only 30 Ukrainians have been granted visas. How many have arrived here, we guess very few. Every country in Europe and Scandinavia is giving visa free travel to Ukrainians. The U.K. is the only country to impose visas and sponsorship requirements on war refugees. This is in flagrant disregard of the refugee convention. Refugees do not require visas.
What started as an attempt to find safe host-sponsors through Room for Refugees for Ukrainian refugees has turned into an operation to guide people out of war zones to reach safety in the U.K. or Ireland. We have prepared resources to help people leave Ukraine as well as apply for visas and sponsors. We have organised hosts for the most urgent cases. In other cases we advise choosing the Scottish Government as a sponsor. But as the situation gets more and more dangerous, families are deserting their apartments and we have no option but to advise those in grave danger to plan a route to Ireland visa-free.
A small team of us are working with volunteers in Scotland, Ireland and Ukraine to track the progress of almost seven hundred families. The priority is those who are in war zones. Barely a handful of people have been given U.K. visas. 3-year olds or 5-year olds have been given visas. Or one member of a family got a visa. But whole families have not received visas. Not a single one. This means no one in the family can travel.
Some of the people who asked us for help with visas and sponsors are right now in grave danger in Eastern Ukraine. Families are getting very upset. Had they left two weeks ago, they might have had a chance, but they are literally waiting to be killed. People waited for visas and sponsors to come through, and it has not happened. We have paid for safe passage for young people. This week we are arranging for two families with children and babies from Eastern Ukraine, and a young woman left stranded in the Donbas region who sought our help to enter Ireland visa free, as the UK route is not only impassable but dangerous to wait for. Your donation will support those in greatest need to find safety.
| | This is what refugee hosting looks like
Jo Haythorthwaite, a retired Librarian from Glasgow, has hosted around thirteen guests through Positive Action in Housing's Room for Refugees Network. Here she is pictured with some of the people who have stayed with her over the years. In fact, Jo was amongst the first to offer to take some one in when we first started Room for Refugees in 2002.
We find it humbling and inspiring when someone agrees to accept a "guest" into their home. We have seen rich, warm relationships develop, that endure on an equal footing, with love and warmth and memories, years after the hosting relationship ends. Its done privately, in an atmosphere of respect, stability and peace.
At the same time, this is very much a response to failure. Government failure. So it is jarring when we see the Minister for Levelling Up celebrating this as some wonderful new innovation they came up with. Like celebrating the opening of a new food bank.
We are mindful that the majority of the world's refugees are hosted in the middle east, South and Central Asia and Eastern European countries. The West hosts a tiny fraction of displaced people, and is responsible for around 40% of displacement.
The reason people took refugees into their homes is because of government policy which made refugees destitute. Child refugees continue to drown in the Aegean sea. Hundreds of thousands of people are left to freeze in refugee camps in Europe. The Aegean Boat report has reported thousands of human rights abuses since it began in 2015, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. And thousands of Afghans are left to languish in cramped hotel rooms, unable to settle. And before that, several thousand refugees were crowded into hotels throughout the pandemic, and are now moved between hotels, and different countries, at whim.
The hosting model of Room for Refugees and other hosting networks run by charities up and down the country is grounded in providing shelter for free while an individual or family resolves their status.
It is not about a media frenzy, breakfast television appearances, financial incentive or forcing hosts and guests to tolerate each other for six months. It is not about mass registers gathering your personal data. It is not about finding refugees on questionable social media pages with no concept of risk or safeguarding. No wonder Europol issued an early action notification a mere six days after Homes for Ukraine was launched. Criminal gangs and traffickers of sex, labour and organ harvesting get their intelligence from these pages. It is not about an individual advertising themselves to get shelter. And what happens after six months of a paid placement? If people arrive here in any sizeable numbers, there will be an explosion in homelessness as Ukrainians become yet another layer in the UK's refugee housing crisis.
So take a look again at the picture above. Its a picture we won't be departing from as we right now help over 700 Ukrainian families find sponsors and safe passage to the UK and Ireland, facilitating flights to help the most vulnerable reach a place of safety. Refugee hosting doesn't belong with a government department using it as a smokescreen for keeping war refugees out. It belongs to the charity sector across the UK who know about developing projects based on vocation, dignity and humanity.
Thanks as ever for your support.
Best wishes and kind regards,
Robina Qureshi
Positive Action in Housing
| | Ukraine Links
Ukrainians Register
Ukrainian residents and nationals fleeing the conflict should complete this online request form . We will provide advice and information on routes to the UK and Ireland and match Ukrainians to volunteer hosts under a revised system.
Offer free shelter to refugees
If you or someone you know is interested in offering free spare rooms in your home, register with Room for Refugees. It's an established and respected refugee hosting programme in the U.K. with over 16,000 hosts and 20 years' of expertise. We have safely sheltered 4,000 refugees to date (2,500 placements). We receive referrals from over 500 refugee and aid organisations, including British Red Cross, Refugee Council, Freedom from Torture, The Passage, Migrants Organise.
Donate to the Ukraine Appeal
The Ukraine Appeal provides direct support to refugees fleeing war. We help people rebuild their lives and build positive futures through advice/information, an Emergency Relief Fund and refugee hosting. Donate via Justgiving or CAF For other ways to give please go to www.paih.org/donate.
Finally, sign up to our mailing list for news and information on our campaigns. | | | | | | | Positive Action in Housing is a non governmental, independent, anti-racist homelessness and human rights charity (SC027577) dedicated to supporting women, children and men from refugee and migrant backgrounds to rebuild their lives. We believe in a society where everyone has the right to live safe and dignified lives, free from poverty, homelessness or inequality. | | | | | | |
