With an illustration about the drownings of two refugee children: Aylan Kurdi, in 2015, and Valéria Martinez (hugging her father), in June this year, researcher Ana Carolina Maciel started the first working meeting of the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair ( CSVM) at Unicamp. The advisory committee, with full and substitute members, took on the challenge of preparing an activity plan for the next two years and implementing the actions that began in 2017, with the Working Group (GT) to implement the Chair. The GT was formed when the University joined the initiative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Unicamp was the twenty-first signatory of the agreement and currently has 13 students in refugee conditions.
“We constituted a highly qualified and representative commission made up of professors, researchers, representatives of the University’s deans and administrative bodies”, highlighted president Ana Carolina Maciel. The Chair is linked to the recently created Executive Directorate for Human Rights and the commission will work with admission policies for refugee students, and in line with the strategic axes established by the national coordination: Scientific Policy; Language Policy; National Policy Plan for Migration, Refuge and Statelessness; Local integration; Law, Refuge, Migration, Statelessness and Strategic Litigation.
In addition to promoting extension and training activities for students, teachers and researchers, the Chair will prioritize the expansion of research on the topic of refuge/migration. Unicamp has been standing out in work in the area, many of them led by professor Rosana Baeninger, within the scope of the "Elza Berquó" Population Studies Center (Nepo). Baeninger coordinated the implementation Working Group (GT), now dissolved.
“Unicamp contributes significantly to reshaping the insertion of refugees into Brazilian society when it opens its doors to students. These students will be able to pursue a university life and be able to integrate into our society and not remain on the sidelines as has been the case” (Ana Carolina Maciel).
Based on the illustrations about drownings, Ana Carolina spoke about the theme of refuge and the Chair's proposals. “We have gone through the biggest refugee crisis in history, numerically surpassing the number of refugees from World War II,” she said. She brought the following data on the issue of refuge in Brazil: “According to information from the National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), there were 157 thousand requests for asylum until December 2018. Every minute 25 people are forced to flee their homes , resulting in a daily average of 37 thousand displaced people. In 2018 alone, 70.8 million people left their homes, according to the United Nations (UN)”.
In the two years of GT Cátedra's work, several actions had already been put into practice. They made it possible, for example, to include 13 refugee students among Unicamp students. They came from six countries: Ghana, Syria, Congo, Sierra Leone, Cuba and Palestine. Humanitarian events were also held with collections, photographic exhibitions and video interviews. For the president of the commission, it was a period of reflection and learning. “We count on the group’s work on several fronts inside and outside the University, including consolidating partnerships with Campinas City Hall and the Metropolitan Agency”, said Ana Carolina.
In honor of World Refugee Day, on June 18, the Chair promoted an event at the Unicamp Teachers' Association (Adunicamp), with a screening of the film “Aeroporto Central”, by filmmaker Karim Ainouz, unreleased in Brazil. After the session, the refugees invited to the event spoke about their experiences and there was also a debate with members of the Chair.
The Brazilian Refuge Law considers as a refugee an individual who leaves his or her country of origin due to well-founded fears of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, social group or imputed political opinions, or due to a situation of serious and widespread violation of human rights in your country of origin. For the president of the Commission, refuge is a request for reception that needs to be met in the best possible way and without leaving the person in a vulnerable situation outside their country. “There are refugees living on the streets and in homeless shelters in Brazil,” she commented. These experiences are told in the series “Retratos Falados”, which Ana Carolina Maciel develops as a documentary filmmaker. Watch some of the videos below:
