Refugee seminar marks world refugee day

By Chanel September
23 June 2007

Over 600 refugee children from all over the cape metropole gathered at the Good Hope Centre today for a youth seminar to mark World Refugee Day.

The event which focused on the plight of refugee children particularly orphans hosted youths between the age’s 10 and 25 years.

The participants of the seminar were from countries such as Bulgaria, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zimbabwe

“This year’s theme for World Refugee Day is ‘The Unheard Voices of Refugee Children’. The aim of today’s event is to facilitate integration between refugee youth and local youth in a fun, interactive programme,” says manager of inter-governmental relations for the city, Kemal Omar.

“It builds on the foundation that we lay on the adoption of the refugee charter that we held a few months ago and leads up to the policy conference that we will host later”, say mayco member for safety and security JP Smith.

Smith adds that there is an enormous diversity problem in the city and it’s important to make the refugee population in Cape Town part of the economic and social development that the city is experiencing.