Welcome to Refugee Week
This year’s Refugee Week theme is ‘healing’, which is fitting in that there are currently an unprecedented 100 million people displaced around the world because of conflict or persecution.
Conflicts in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and elsewhere continue to create more refugees every day.
The wellbeing of people who have fled their homes across the world has been made even more precarious by the COVID-19 pandemic and the current global economic and food crises.
The good news is that humanitarian settlement programs are beginning to open up again around the world as the effects of the pandemic recede.
AMES Australia is playing a role in this by once again welcoming refugees to Australia.
In September last year – after 18 months of almost no refugees arriving because of closed borders – AMES Australia welcomed almost 2000 Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover of their homeland.
The arrivals came amid a COVID lockdown and with many essential services shuttered.
This video explains how we did it.