 | |
| Formation | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit |
| Headquarters | Amman, Jordan |
Co-founder | Anouk Dey |
Co-founder | Katherine Krieg |
| Award(s) | Nansen Refugee Award (2018, Middle East finalist) |
Reclaim Childhood is a Jordanian organisation that supports refugee girls. It was the Nansen Refugee Award finalist for the Middle East region in 2018.
The organisation was founded by Anouk Dey and Katherine Krieg in the summer of 2008, initially focussing on helping Iraqi refugee girls. [1] The headquarters are in Amman. [2]
Reclaim Childhood operates in Amman and Zarqa and as of 2018, provided support to around 500 refugee and Jordanian girls aged between 8 and 18 years old. [3] Services provided include after-school activities, including sports and dance classes. [3] [4] The girls who are refugees come from Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. [5] Reclaim Childhood employee refugees as staff. [3]
Reclaim Childhood was the Nansen Refugee Award finalist for the Middle East region in 2018. [6]
Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein is King of Jordan, having ascended the throne on 7 February 1999. He is a member of the Hashemite dynasty, who have been the reigning royal family of Jordan since 1921, and is considered a 41st-generation direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Amman New Camp or Al-Wehdat camp, locally known as Al-Wihdat, which is located in the Hay Al Awdah neighbourhood, in southeast Amman, the capital city of Jordan occupies a 0.48 km2 (0.19 sq mi), Of the ten recognized Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Al-Wehdat is the second largest, with a population of roughly 57,000 registered refugees, which includes 8,400 students. The United Nation body responsible for administrating Palestinian refugee camps, is the Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
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 support of governments or international organizations.
The Nansen Refugee Award is awarded annually by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to an individual, group, or organization in recognition of outstanding service to the cause of refugees, displaced or stateless people. It was established in 1954; Eleanor Roosevelt was the inaugural awardee. The award is named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate, explorer, and League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen.
Refugees of Iraq are Iraqi nationals who have fled Iraq due to war or persecution. Throughout the past 30 years, there have been a growing number of refugees fleeing Iraq and settling throughout the world, peaking recently with the latest Iraq War. Precipitated by a series of conflicts including the Kurdish rebellions during the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait (1990) and the Gulf War (1991), the subsequent sanctions against Iraq, and culminating in the violence during and after the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, millions have been forced by insecurity to flee their homes in Iraq. Like the majority of refugees worldwide, Iraqi refugees have established themselves in urban areas in other countries rather than in refugee camps. In April 2007, there was an estimate of over four million Iraqi refugees around the world, including 1.9 million in Iraq, 2 million in neighboring Middle East countries, and around 200,000 in countries outside the Middle East. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has led the humanitarian efforts for Iraqi refugees. The Iraqi displacement of several million was the largest in the Middle East at the time, and was even larger than the number of Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel.
The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) is an international organization that serves and protects uprooted people, including migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people, regardless of faith, race, ethnicity or nationality. With staff and programs in over 40 countries, ICMC advocates for sustainable solutions and rights-based policies directly and through a worldwide network of 132 member organizations.
The Iraqi diaspora refers to native Iraqis who have left for other countries as emigrants or refugees, and is now one of the largest in modern times, being described by the UN as a "humanitarian crisis" caused by the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 invasion of Iraq and by the ensuing war.
Palestinians in Iraq are people of Palestinians, most of whom have been residing in Iraq after they were displaced in 1948. Before 2003, there were approximately 34,000 Palestinians thought to be living in Iraq, mainly concentrated in Baghdad. However, since the 2003 Iraq War, the figure lies between 10,000–13,000, although a precise figure has been hard to determine. The situation of Palestinians in Iraq deteriorated after the fall of Saddam Hussein and particularly following the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in 2006. Since then, with the rise in insecurity throughout Iraq, they have been the target of expulsion, persecution and violence by Shia militants, and the new Iraqi Government with militant groups targeting them for preferential treatment they received under the Ba'ath Party rule. Currently, several hundred Palestinians from Iraq are living in border camps, after being refused entry to neighbouring Jordan and Syria. Others have been resettled to third countries.
There have been many waves of refugees and emigrants from Iraq since the late 1970s until the present. Major events the modern history of Iraq resulted in the flight of what are now millions of Iraqis: more than three decades of repression and occasional violent attacks and massacres against the Kurdish population in the north and the Shi'a in the south perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's regime, the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988, the 1991 Gulf War, the economic sanctions that lasted from 1991 until the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Once known as Qatar Charitable Society, Qatar Charity is a humanitarian and development non-governmental organization in the Middle East. It was founded in 1992 in response to the thousands of children who were made orphans by the Afghanistan war and while orphans still remain a priority cause in the organization's work with more than 150,000 sponsored orphans, it has now expanded its fields of action to include six humanitarian fields and seven development fields.
Refugees in Jordan rose with the uprising against the Syrian government and its President Bashar al-Assad. Close to 13,000 Syrians per day began pouring into Jordan to reside in its refugee camps.
Egypt, which does not border Syria, became a major destination for Syrian refugees since 2012 following the election of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was a critic of Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War. As of 2016, there are 114,911 registered Syrian refugees living in Egypt.
Turkey's migrant crisis, sometimes referred to as Turkey's refugee crisis was a period during the 2010s characterized by high numbers of people arriving in Turkey. Turkey received the highest number of registered refugees of any country or territory every year from 2014 to 2019, and had the world's largest refugee population according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The majority are refugees of the Syrian Civil War, numbering 3,591,892 as of June 2020. In 2018 the UNHCR reported that Turkey hosted 63.4% of all the "registered Syrian refugees."
Community Sponsorship is a UK government-backed, volunteer-led refugee resettlement scheme. Inspired by the Canadian Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program of over 40 years, Community Sponsorship was introduced in the UK in 2016. The scheme enables groups of local volunteers to support a refugee family for their first year in the UK. It is eligible to those from Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt who are displaced due to the Syrian crisis.
COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa, commonly known as CIYOTA is a Ugandan not-for-profit refugee-education organisation. It was formed in 2005 by refugee youth and was the Africa finalists for the Nansen Refugee Award in 2013.
Humanitarian Corridors is a partnership of European religious organisations, initially Italian ones, that sponsors refugees and helps them move to Europe. The partnership won the European Nansen Refugee Award in 2019.
Ihsan Ezedeen is a Syrian paediatrician who provides affordable care to displaced people in Jaramana and who was the Middle East finalist for the 2017 Nansen Refugee Award. He is known in Syria as "the doctor of the poor".
Sabuni Francoise Chikunda is a Congolese torture survivor, refugee, activist, teacher, and organisation founder, based in Uganda. She was the Africa regional winner of the Nansen Refugee Award in 2020.
Zannah Bukar Mustapha is a Nigerian educator and lawyer. He quit the legal profession in 2007 to open a school for orphaned children, opening a second school in 2016. Mustapha has twice negotiated the release of girls and women abducted in north Nigeria. He is the 2017 winner of the Nansen Refugee Award.
Konstantinos Mitragas is a Greek businessman, sea captain and the secretary-general of the Hellenic Rescue Team that supports refugees arriving in Lesvos. He collected the Nansen Refugee Award in 2016 on behalf of the Hellenic Rescue Team.