Mary Maker is a South Sudanese refugee, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and education advocate. [1] [2] [3] She is a former teacher at Kakuma Refugee Camp to a class of 120 students. [4] [5] [6] She is also an actor, TED speaker, a fashion lover, and a writer. [7] [3]
Mary is currently pursuing further studies in Theater and Political Science with a concentration in Women and Gender Studies at St. Olaf College Minnesota after receiving a scholarship from Mastercard Foundation scholarship program. [7] [1] [4] [8]
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 18,879 staff working in 138 countries as of 2020.
St. Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. It was founded in 1874 by a group of Norwegian-American pastors and farmers led by Pastor Bernt Julius Muus. The college is named after the King and the Patron Saint Olaf II of Norway and is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It was visited by King Olav in 1987 and King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway in 2011. Queen Sonja of Norway visited the college's campus a second time in 2022 as part of a tour to celebrate the connections between Norway and Minnesota's Norwegian-American community. She participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Special Collections vault at Rølvaag Memorial Library.
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced people. Usually, refugees seek asylum after they have escaped war in their home countries, but some camps also house environmental and economic migrants. Camps with over a hundred thousand people are common, but as of 2012, the average-sized camp housed around 11,400. They are usually built and run by a government, the United Nations, international organizations, or non-governmental organization. Unofficial refugee camps, such as Idomeni in Greece or the Calais jungle in France, are where refugees are largely left without the support of governments or international organizations.
Kakuma is a town in northwestern Turkana County, Kenya. It is the site of a UNHCR refugee camp, established in 1992. The population of Kakuma town was 60,000 in 2014, having grown from around 8,000 in 1990. In 1991, the camp was established to host unaccompanied minors who had fled the war in Sudan,Somalia and from camps in Ethiopia. It was estimated that there were 12,000 "lost boys and girls" who had fled here via Egypt in 1990/91.
Dadaab is a semi-arid town in Garissa County, Kenya. It is the site of a UNHCR base hosting 302,805 registered refugees and asylum seekers in three camps as of 31 October 2023, making it one of the largest in the world behind Kutupalong refugee camp. The centre is run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and its operations are financed by foreign donors. In 2013, UNHCR, the governments of Kenya and Somalia signed a tripartite agreement facilitating the repatriation of Somali refugees at the complex.
There are tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Egypt, most of them seeking refuge from ongoing military conflicts in their home country of Sudan. Their official status as refugees is highly disputed, and they have been subject to racial discrimination and police violence.
Lisa Milroy is an Anglo-Canadian artist known for her still life paintings of everyday objects. In the 1980s, Milroy’s paintings featured ordinary objects depicted against an off-white background. Subsequently her imagery expanded, which led to a number of different series including landscapes, buildings and portraits. As her approaches to still life diversified, so did her manner of painting, giving rise to a range of stylistic innovations. Throughout her practice, Milroy has been fascinated by the relation between stillness and movement, and the nature of making and looking at painting.
The Sahrawi refugee camps, also known as the Tindouf camps, are a collection of refugee camps set up in the Tindouf Province, Algeria in 1975–76 for Sahrawi refugees fleeing from Moroccan forces, who advanced through Western Sahara during the Western Sahara War. With most of the original refugees still living in the camps, the situation is among the most protracted in the world.
An urban refugee is a refugee who decided or was obliged to settle in an urban area rather than in a refugee camp in the country or territory where the person fled to. More than 60% of the world's refugee population and 80% of internally displaced persons (IDP) under UNHCR mandate live in urban environments. In 2009, their number was around 5.5 million people. "Urban refugee" is not a recognized legal term in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. However, the UNHCR has adopted a 'Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas' in 2009.
Ambassadorial Scholarships was a program of the Rotary Foundation. The program ended in 2013 and was replaced by the Rotary Global Grant Scholarship, which expands on the Ambassadorial mission, by now ensuring that every Rotary Scholar advance Rotary's International mission to " promote service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace.".
Ger Duany is a South Sudanese and US-American movie actor and former refugee born in southern Sudan, who was resettled to the United States at the age of 15.
South Sudanese refugees are persons originating from the African country of South Sudan, but seeking refuge outside the borders of their native country. The world's youngest independent country has a recent and troubled history of prolonged conflicts and ecosystem mismanagement such as overlogging, which has led to desertification. These forces have resulted not only in violence and famine, but also the forced migration of large numbers of the population, both inside and outside the country's borders. South Sudan was cited as the largest refugee crisis in 2016, being the world's third largest, followed by Syria and Afghanistan. As of 2022, the UNHCR estimated that there were 2.4 million refugees under its mandate originating from South Sudan, making the country the fifth largest source of refugees.
Yiech Pur Biel is a track and field athlete and UNHCR goodwill ambassador originally from Nasir, South Sudan, but now living and training in the United States. He was selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to compete for the Refugee Olympic Team in the 800 m event at the 2016 Summer Olympics. He placed last in his heat.
Emtithal "Emi" Mahmoud is a Sudanese-American poet and activist, who won the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam championship. In 2018, she became UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, and in this capacity, has traveled to refugee camps in Kenya, Greece and Jordan, drawing wider attention to the situation of refugees.
Liberty Vittert is an American statistician, political commentator, and host of Liberty’s Great American Cookbook, a cooking show on Scottish Television.
Nyadol Nyuon, is an Australian lawyer and human rights advocate, who was born in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, of a family fleeing the Second Sudanese Civil War. She works as a commercial litigator in Melbourne and is a regular media commentator.
Mercy Akuot Marang is a South Sudanese social activist and singer. She currently lives in Kenya.
Maya Ghazal is a UK-based Syrian refugee, a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, the first female Syrian pilot, and a Diana Award winner.
Sheikha Rima al-Sabah is a Lebanese-Kuwaiti former journalist, and a current UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.
Kakuma Refugee Camp is a refugee camp located in northwestern Turkana County, Kenya. It was established in 1992 to host unaccompanied minors who had fled the war in Sudan and from camps in Ethiopia. The camp is situated in the second poorest region in Kenya and as a result of this poverty, there are ongoing tensions between the refugees and the local community that has occasionally resulted in violence.