A mock refugee camp is built in the heart of campus, as if to portray or simulate the life of a refugee, a stateless person without a sense of security or sufficient food and water, while teams of volunteers attempt to depict some of the largest refugee camps around the world.
Community members take photos and upload with the hashtag, #THISCOULDBEYU.
In Syria alone, 13.5 million people need humanitarian assistance, 4.6 million Syrians are refugees, and of the 6.6 million who are displaced within Syria, half are children.
The event is centred on an indoor reconstruction of a refugee camp, with the attempt to depict the struggles faced in refugee camps, enlisting the scholarly efforts of student volunteers to converse with peers on numerous issues affecting refugees and asylum-seekers.
Ziad Aljanabi Musi, an international development student, is part of one of the biggest humanitarian organizations on campus.
“We are all a group of students who have big links to the other side of the world where the crisis is currently going on,” says Aljanabi Musi.
“More than anything we were just an original group of students who wanted to make a difference.”
The main purpose of the event here today is to get the word out, he adds. Even though their focus as a club is the Syrian refugee crisis, they’re using this event to talk about all refugee crisis.
“The Syrian refugee crisis is actually the second biggest refugee crisis,” says Aljanabi Musi. “The biggest refugee crisis is still Afghans in Pakistan. Also, there is the refugee crisis in Africa, [where] the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been displaced.”
Huda Kaissi, a third-year biology student, says this is the third year they’ve set up camp.
“What we try to do is to portray to the student body what goes on in refugee camps,” she says.
“So what’s going to happen is that they are going to walk through the camp, they’re going to see what’s inside, and when they come out they are going to see a presentation about refugees and what’s going on now.”
Moreover, Kaissi explains, before students enter the camp, they must be processed and registered.
“Then they get more of a feel. Refugees have to get registered before they are allowed to enter a camp and live there.”
The registration is to show how students are not entitled to any benefits without having an ID.
“These IDs are sometimes hard to attain,” says Bahar Naizi, public policy student. “But without them you will not be able to enter the camps or have the food. The emphasis is on the ID tags because that’s basically your identification. Sometimes it’s very hard to attain as well.”
“So today we are trying to give people an experience of what it’s like to be a refugee,” she adds.
“So we have this [online] camp. It’s an app online. You actually get a sense of what it’s like to be inside. People are interested to see what the lives of refugees are like. This just gives them a sense of what it’s like.”
For York, being a multicultural hub of students and faculty, the Syrian refugee issue, for obvious reasons, hits close to home. This week, events are getting revved up to bring more attention to the ongoing horrors in Syria with various organizations trying to combat the broad displacements happening in the Middle East.
Hajir Sharifi, a human rights and equity studies student, who is also a refugee, spent the summer north of Iraq volunteering in refugee camps. He’s preparing to speak about the experience this Thursday in the Chancellor’s Room in the Student Centre.
“The situation was devastating,” Sharifi says. “The pain and suffering was beyond imagination. More than 1.8 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees are living in 18 refugee camps struggling to survive.”
The camps were overcrowded, food and clean water were scarce, and the hygiene conditions were at their worst, he adds.
“In some camps, I saw people lining up under the scorching sun and suffocative heat of the summer to get drinking water. Thousands of children deprived from education and schooling running around barefoot.”
The region has a harsh summer and winter, and due to lack of electricity, the refugees [living] under tents have to endure the searing heat of the summer and freezing cold of the winter, says Sharifi.
“Those painful scenes that I saw there, the innocent looks of children in those camps still haunt me.”
Lifeline Syria is offering sponsorship and volunteer sessions to offer students an opportunity to get involved. Over 1,000 volunteers made up of students, alumni, staff, and broader community members have signed up to be a part of the Lifeline Syria Challenge.
Ontario universities are collaborating on the Lifeline Syria Challenge, continuing the legacy of Howard Adelman in relighting the 1979 Operation on Vietnamese refugees known as “Boat People.”
In particular, professor David Langille and his third-year social science students are raising money to sponsor a Syrian family.
Langille says his class was ahead of the curve and initially brought in experts from Ryerson to mentor the class before York got onboard with Ryerson’s initiative.
So far, the initiative has raised $16,000 toward an ultimate goal of $27,700 which will be used to support a family of four for one year in Toronto.
“Those rates are established by the City of Toronto,” says Langille.
“These are social assistance rates for a family on welfare for a year. It’s hard to live on $27,000 in Toronto for a year. We’re trying to raise more than that.”
According to Langille, his students have made a one-year commitment to a Syrian family which entails finding housing, helping with legal work, and meeting the family at the airport.
Although Langille and his students have yet to be matched with a family, they are eagerly anticipating hitting the 75 per cent funding threshold needed to begin the matching process.
The process may take several months and five students have made a long-term commitment.
Langille notes that if every student at York was to contribute just 75 cents, the fundraising part of the initiative would be a breeze.
Moreover, 62 sponsoring teams have been formed, approaching the goal of 75 teams across all collaborating universities, with another seven fundraising teams mobilizing their communities to support the resettlement of Syrian refugees.
So far, 29 teams have been matched with families, and more are expected to be matched as cases become available to Ryerson’s Lifeline Syria Challenge staff, almost half of all teams. Eight families (of those matched) have arrived to date? for a total of 56 Syrian refugees.
Dalubuhle Ndlovu, a student senator, is sponsoring a family of Syrian refugees, one of many in the York community who are working to bring aid to the Syrian people.
Ndlovu, who is also a SCOLAPS executive, is collaborating with Scott Library to raise awareness around library resources available to students. The event “4 days for Syria” starts on February 10.
In partnership with Scott Library and Faculty of LAPS, Lifeline Syria and the U of Mosaic is also presenting “See it Through our Lens,” starting February 10.
The week-long event will address the trials and tribulations, as well as past experiences of refugees through the medium of artistic expression.
Since 2012, over five million people have been displaced.
Children affected by the Syrian conflict are at risk of becoming ill, malnourished, abused, or exploited. Millions have been forced to quit school.
Ryan Moore, News Editor
Alex Kvaskov, Assistant News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Hajir Sharifi
