Uploads from UNHCR, tagged chechnya, with geodata

UNHCR News Story: Refugees in Moldova get on the property ladder with UNHCR help

nobody@flickr.com (UNHCR) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:19:52 -0700

UNHCR posted a photo:

Children at the handing over ceremony for the new apartments in the village of Mereni.
UNHCR photo / April 2012 .

Refugees in Moldova get on the property ladder with UNHCR help

CHISINAU, Republic of Moldova, April 19 (UNHCR) – After years of living in sub-standard and frequently costly housing, refugees in Moldova are reaping the benefits of a scheme that demonstrates how the country can provide inexpensive housing solutions for vulnerable people.

The new pilot housing scheme, established by UNHCR and the European Union (EU) under a local integration project for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, has seen four apartments handed over to refugees in the village of Mereni, about 25 kilometres south-east of Chisinau.

Refugees from Chechnya, Armenia, Palestine and Sudan received symbolic keys to their new homes. A further four apartments are under renovation in neighbouring Razeni and should be ready in a few weeks.

At present, refugees in Moldova must compete with local residents for affordable housing. But the new scheme has seen UNHCR renovate dilapidated buildings, attracting keen interest from Moldova's government.

Speaking at the recent hand-over ceremony in Mereni, Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Moldovanu said Moldova must help ensure that refugees find housing. "Any society that claims to be democratic must fully respect the rights of its members and people living on its land," he said.

Tanzila Cartoeva, an ethnic Chechen who came to Moldova in 1997, was among the refugees to benefit from the pilot project. She said her new apartment will help resolve a lot of the problems she has encountered raising four children.

"We spent so much money on rent and utility bills, it was impossible to have some savings or even cover our essential needs," Cartoeva said. "Now as we move to a new apartment which is much more comfortable and pleasant than the one we lived in before, our family can not just survive, but properly live." She added that she would "try to find a job here which will be favourable both for the community and my family."

Under the arrangement UNHCR negotiated out with the local authority, beneficiaries of the pilot scheme will live rent-free in their apartments for up to five years, thus saving money they can put aside to buy a home. Then the apartments may be allocated to other needy refugees. The refugee families will contribute to the upkeep of their new homes and pay utility bills.

Under the local integration project, UNHCR offices in Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine implement various activities in self-reliance, housing and language training to help refugees better integrate in some of Europe's poorest states.

In Moldova, the local authorities in Mereni and Razeni villages offered dilapidated buildings to the UNHCR for free. Architects working for UNHCR designed modest space-efficient apartments in run-down buildings.

"UNHCR is grateful to the European Union and the villages for support and we hope that the government may be able to offer more assistance in the future to help refugees integrate," said UNHCR Representative Peter Kessler.

By Evghenia Stupak in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova

UNHCR News Story: A third of refugees in Poland may be homeless

nobody@flickr.com (UNHCR) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:15:58 -0800

UNHCR posted a photo:

Zeynab fled to Poland from Chechnya in 2004. She and her son have been homeless for four years. A third of Poland's refugees could be homeless and many more are at risk
UNHCR/M.Qandil

A third of refugees in Poland may be homeless

WARSAW, 20 February (UNHCR) – A third of refugees granted asylum in Poland may be homeless forced to sleep in shelters, empty buildings, train stations or even night buses.

Zeynab* and her twenty-something son Akhmad are two of those facing the problems identified in Refugee Homelessness in Poland, a pilot study conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs and funded by UNHCR.

Homeless for most of the last three years, they spend many nights in buses, a local mosque, cheap hotels or other people's houses. Recently they have been staying in the flat of a friend who is out of town but do not know where they will go when their host returns. They arrived in Poland in 2004 after their closest family members had been killed during the war in Chechnya, leaving them with very few relatives. They were granted asylum (subsidiary protection) two years later.

"We have only each other," Zeynab sobbed when a social worker suggested the pair separate to increase their chances of finding a home. The widowed mother could never accept such an outcome. There are hundreds of refugees in Poland in a situation similar to that of Zeynab and Akhmad; one third of refugees in the country may be homeless according to the study.

The case of Zeynab and her son illustrated one of the key findings of the study. They lived in a refugee centre while their asylum applications were processed and during the year-long integration programme that followed.The problem came when the programme with its housing and living benefits ended and they were expected to support themselves. They have been homeless ever since.

"The greatest risk of homelessness appears when the integration programme ends," said Kinga Wysieńska, co-author of the study which concluded that the integration programme does not fulfill its function. "In the space of one-year, refugees are not able to learn Polish or acquire professional and socio-cultural competencies necessary to undertake work and function independently in the society," said Wysieńska. Zeynab and Akhmad survive thanks to him finding random and very low paid jobs. The money is enough to buy food, but not to rent a flat. "Look!" Zeynab pointed to their feet. "The last salary let us get winter shoes!" she said, smiling briefly.

She is normally extremely fatigued, appears often lost in thought and her speech can be impeded. She most probably suffers from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from her experiences in the Chechnya war but receives no professional help in Poland."Zeynab is extremely vulnerable," said Izabela Majewska, a social worker at Polish Humanitarian Action who has been in touch with her since her arrival to Poland. But the Refugee Homelessness study found that single mothers with small children face the highest risk of homelessness.

Dagman came to Poland from Chechnya with her husband and three kids in the same year that Zeynab arrived, fled the abusive relationship and faced years of homelessness until only recently receiving a council flat."Everyone knew about it, when we stayed in a refugee centre," she said of the abuse and beatings by her husband that had begun years before. "But no one took any action." It was only when he had beaten their teenage daughter unconscious that Dagman finally made the decision to escape, an extremely risky move as she knew he would pursue them. "He kept calling, asking where we were and threatening that he would burn me alive. I don't know how I survived it, but I did," Dagman said.

She wept as she talked of her children being beaten, but remained composed as she talked of her own suffering. She had spent years moving with her children from one crisis intervention centre to another each time she reached the six-month limit for stays.

Her miracle happened when they were granted a council flat, one of only five allotted yearly by the Warsaw City Council to refugee families. They now enjoy 50-square-meters of safety. "I still can't believe it. I keep thinking that something horrible will happen to us soon. It has been too good for too long," Dagman said. All her children attend school and Dagman works part-time as a cleaner to supplement what she receives in alimony from the government. They can pay the rent and survive, but not much more. And she still lives in fear of the day when her ex-husband, jailed for not paying alimony,will be released from prison.

While there are no official statistics on refugee homelessness in Poland, the pilot study concluded all refugees are at risk of housing exclusion --lacking either enough income to pay rent and deposits or facing discrimination from landlords. Many experience it.

The study found that refugee homelessness is a long-term problem, often lasting many years. Dagman and her children are among the very few lucky ones. Zeynab and Akhmad are still waiting for their own roof.

By Magda Qandil in Warsaw

* All names are changed for protection reasons.

UNHCR News Story: Renovated registry office to ease integration of Chechen refugees

nobody@flickr.com (UNHCR) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:48:27 -0700

UNHCR posted a photo:

Newly trained staff with their modern computers serve customers at the renovated CRA office in Ahkmeta. /UNHCR / A. Shrestha /September 2010

AKHMETA, Georgia, September 14 (UNHCR) – At some time in their life, everyone needs legal documentation, ranging from birth and marriage certificates to an ID card or a passport. In Georgia, that means going to the Civil Registry Agency (CRA).

But years of neglect and insufficient funding had left the busy CRA branch office in the north-east Georgia town of Akhmeta in poor shape, and this was affecting its ability to serve the local population, including refugees from Chechnya living in the region's Pankisi Gorge.

"Our office was built in 1946, Soviet style, and it was in a bad state. Customers waited in a drafty cold corridor; employees sat in cramped cubicles," Levan Itiuridze, head of Akhmeta office, told UNHCR visitors.

The working conditions were abysmal – freezing cold in winter and boiling hot in summer – and the equipment and facilities were antiquated. As a result, staff members were only able to handle about 15 customers a day, turning away a further 15-20.

In July last year, as part of a strategy to ease the local integration of Chechen refugees in the Pankisi and to help build the capacity of local civil servants, UNHCR funded the renovation of the branch office. The facility reopened in late August and the transformation was remarkable.

Not only has the building been renovated, but the office has been equipped with a state of the art computerized registration system connected to the Justice Ministry in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Before, all applications and correspondence between the ministry and Akhmeta had to be sent by road.

CRA staff in the town can now access the Justice Ministry's main computer immediately, register an applicant's details and print out the necessary documents. "The service is great now," said Koki Peradze, head of UNHCR's Akhmeta office. "If I need to renew my passport, all I have to do is go to the CRA branch office here in Akhmeta," added Peradze, a Georgian citizen.

Training of staff by UNHCR, as part of a general capacity-building strategy, was a vital component of the project, "We received training on how to improve our customer service, how to answer all the different questions, how to keep calm under pressure and how to achieve better results with the computerized system," said documentation specialist, Manana Khokhobashvili. The centre can now handle 40 customers a day.

While the civil registry caters mostly to locals, it is also very important to the nearly 1,000 refugees from Chechnya who remain in the region. They were among some 8,000 who fled across the nearby border in 1999 to escape conflict in their corner of the Russian Federation.

Most of these 8,000 either returned to Chechnya or moved to Western Europe, but those who remain in the Pankisi Gorge are being gradually integrated into the local community with the help of UNHCR. This means they need documents, which is where the Akhmeta centre plays a crucial role.

They can apply for the all-important birth certificates for children born in Georgia and for marriage certificates for couples tying the knot with other refugees or locals. And since April last year, the refugees have been able to apply at the CRA for special travel documents which allow them to go overseas for education, training or employment and to visit relatives.

And if the government offers citizenship to the refugees in the future, the CRA branch in Akhmeta will become even more busy processing applications for documents and issuing national ID cards.

The renovation work has been warmly welcomed by the Chechens. "You can't compare how it was before and how it is now. And I am not talking about nice walls and floors, but also about the service, which has also improved a lot," said Fatima Bagakhashvili.

Helping to build capacity among staff in government and non-governmental organizations is a major element of UNHCR's work in Georgia. Funds permitting, the refugee agency hopes to train staff in four more CRA offices in areas hosting nearly 250,000 forcibly displaced Georgians and 1,700 stateless people.

By Liene Veide in Akhmeta, Georgia

The People We Help - Asylum-Seekers

nobody@flickr.com (UNHCR) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:50:59 -0800

UNHCR posted a photo:

Many asylum-seekers in Europe live in collective centres while their claims are being processed. These girls from Chechnya are staying in a centre in Linin, Poland.
UNHCR / B. Szandelszky / December 2006