Yemeni students learn about refugee issues

UNHCR project aims to raise awareness among young generations of refuges issues.

As part of the activities in the build up to this year’s World Refugee Day, taking place on 20th June, Amideast, an English language institute, and the UNHCR initiated a project to raise awareness on refugee issues for around 200 students in Sana’a, Yemen.

The initiative consisted of designing and implementing refugee centred English language classes where students learnt about and discussed the different kinds of refugees around the world, the reasons why people become refugees, where refugees tend to flee to, some of the stereotypes surrounding refugees and, amongst other things, the similarities between refugee law and Islam.

Students also conducted an activity where they were asked to put themselves into the shoes of refugees and imagine how they would feel if they were forced to leave their country, their home, their friends, their family and had to go to another country where they did not know the language or the culture and had no social network or family connections to fall back on.

During the second half of each class, Sana’a based refugees came into the classroom so that students and refugees could meet and talk together. The aim was to help dispel some of the negative stereotypes of refugees that exist not only here in Yemen, but also around the world. For the vast majority of students, this exercise represented the first time that students had actually met with – let alone spoken to – a ‘real’ refugee. More than that, students spent at least an hour and a half thinking about refugee issues and listening to refugees’ experiences and the problems that refugees face. A 19 year old student, Ibrahim, said “I think I know I have to respond to a refugee, they have come to our country for help, we need to be friends and make them feel welcome”. The feedback has been very positive. Doa’a, age 18, commented “I learned we must help refugees, they have feelings like we do, and often think they are unwanted in Yemen”. Perhaps the biggest success of the whole exercise was the students’ realisation that, beyond the stereotypes, refugees are indeed real people with real needs.

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