By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
World Refugee Day, observed on June 20 each year, is dedicated to honoring the strength, courage and resilience of refugees.
This year, Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees (CWR) will participate in the global observance by hanging a banner on the fence at Lakeland Park, installing a display at The Key Consignment Shop on Albany Street, and posting relevant information and resources online at cazwelcomesrefugees.org/index.html.
CWR is a community-based initiative dedicated to working with newly resettled refugees as they integrate into American life. The organization also engages with Cazenovia residents to foster a welcoming environment for refugees to live, work and attend school.
According to CWR, a refugee is an individual who has been forced to flee his or her country due to persecution, war or violence such as ethnic, tribal or religious concerns for example.
Refugees often face persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they are unable or afraid to return home.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), at least 70.8 million people worldwide have been forced to flee their homes; among them are 41.3 million internally displaced individuals, 3.5 million asylum-seekers, and nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.
Two-thirds of all refugees worldwide come from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.
The UNHCR estimates that one person is forcibly displaced every two seconds as a result of conflict or persecution.
World Refugee Day was first celebrated on June 20, 2001 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
“The purpose of the holiday is to show who refugees are and why they require our protection, and to celebrate refugees’ contributions around the world,” explained CWR Steering Committee member Carolyn Holmes.
According to CWR co-facilitator Cindy Sutton, every community — even those as small and rural as Cazenovia — has a role to play in making a lasting impact on the lives of refugees and displaced people around the world.
“World Refugee Day is really for all of us,” Sutton said. “Refugees are marginalized people, and in the same way that ‘Black Lives Matter’ is [important] for everyone, so is World Refugee Day . . . CWR celebrates [it] because we think we have much to learn and gain from the refugee experience [globally and here in Cazenovia]. It’s a way of recognizing and honoring the difficult lives that refugees experience. It takes such courage for refugee families to leave everything they know and love because they have to . . . When they do resettle, in the United States for example, they are vetted very, very carefully by the government; sometimes it takes up to five years before they are allowed in.”
Sutton added that the United States is not accepting refugees at this time.
“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration had already cut the number of refugees allowed into the country by more than a half from previous years,” she said. “It’s really an anti-immigrant policy under this current administration.”
According to Sutton, several regional organizations have been proactive in supporting resettled refugees during the pandemic.
“In Syracuse and Utica, the resettlement agencies that are working daily with the refugee families who are already here have done really outstanding work,” Sutton said. “[They are] not only delivering food and diapers, but also engaging translators in at least 15 different languages and dialects, so that the agencies have a way of communicating directly to refugee families what the pandemic is all about and what they need to do to be safe . . .”
CWR grew out of a Common Grounds grant intended to support an initiative to improve the Cazenovia community.
Officially established in fall 2017, the CWR Steering Committee represents a coalition of local groups united by the belief that refugees contribute to economic growth and bring new perspectives and cultural richness to the community and to the nation as a whole.
CWR is supported by multiple sectors of the community, including the Cazenovia Central School District, Cazenovia College, Cazenovia Public Library, local faith communities, nonprofit groups, local government, businesses and private citizens.
The organization supports new American families in the community by helping them to identify housing options and by facilitating relationships with employers, schools, health care providers and others.
CWR also organizes educational events in the community, which create greater awareness of the global refugee crisis and the challenges refugees face as they integrate into American communities.
The organization is supported by and works in partnership with InterFaith Works of Syracuse and its Center for New Americans — an agency that provides resettlement and post-resettlement services to refugee families in the Syracuse area.
In August 2018, CWR celebrated the arrival of its first resettled refugee family — a Kurdish family from northern Iraq — in Cazenovia.
For more information on CWR, contact [email protected]. To learn more about the UN Refugee Agency or to donate, visit unhcr.org/en-us/.
