Documenting Refugees for peace in DRCongo

Meetings various stakeholders at national level in order to offer documents to refugees and put in place a better management

We are so much engaged in organizing meetings at national level focusing on issues about refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At first with various organizations of the Civil Society based in Kinshasa and then we are also engaging government authorities.

Here are some of the activities:

Presenting issues about refugees in events where we are invited: We have attended 15 events where we introduced challenges refugees are facing in Kinshasa in particular and in DRC in general.

Here is the general reaction we always get from people or participants “are you sure that we have refugees here in Kinshasa? They came from which countries? How many are they? Where do they stay? How do they survive? What is UNHCR doing for them?”

If you look at these questions all of them point at one thing: The lack of information about refugees in DRC. That is why we are challenging ignorance and help people to get accurate information.

Meetings with refugees

We have held four (4) different meetings with refugee leaders aiming at empowering them about their rights and advocacy approach in order to make themselves visible. Here is some of the reactions “We hide here in Kinshasa and we do not want people to know that we are refugees because we fear we can be attacked by people, I have been in my area where I stay for 7 years now but no one knows that I’m a refugee”. If you also look at this question there is an issue of identity which should be addressed and issues around discrimination.

World Refugee Day June 20^th in Kinshasa

We organized the very first world refugee day in Kinshasa which brought together various stakeholders including Diplomatic Missions and Government officials and had time to engage directly with refugees. This Diplomate from Angola said “ thank you so much for this activity, I’m really surprised, I did not know that we have refugees from Angola here in DRC, now I’m wondering what we can do, I will share this with our Ambassador”.

Letters and one to one meetings

We have wrote three (3) letters to authorities on the situation of refugees and the needs to offer them documents. We have also met various stakeholders individually in their offices and exchanged on this issue.

Challenges 

Our main challenge which is slowing down our activities and which delaying solutions towards refugee documents is the lack of funds. Even this project has failed to raise funds yet without documents refugees cannot be protected in DRC. Please support this project now