Complementary resettlement for refugees
Complementary resettlement pathways help refugees access protection and long-term solutions in another country. These safe and regulated avenues aim not to replace the existing international protection mechanisms, but instead aim to complement refugee resettlement and allow refugees and other displaced persons to be admitted in a country with possible sustainable and lasting opportunities. Complementary pathways include: Academic Scholarship, Community Sponsorship, Family Reunification, and Humanitarian Visa. These programs can ensure a displaced person can reach safety in dignity while decreasing the amount of time they spend in unsafe places or separated from their families. These pathways must be carefully designed and implemented to ensure adequate protection, and is done so with global solidarity and international cooperation from UNHCR, governments, civil society, private sector, and academia.
Refugee Pathways aims to raise awareness among displaced people, and the concerned global community, about safe complementary pathways and encourage and empower refugees and other displaced people to make well-informed decisions on how to reach a safe new home and protection through these opportunities. As we close on 2021, Refugee Pathways applauds these four complementary pathways as being models for safe relocation for displaced individuals and families and we encourage greater international community engagement to create similar opportunities in the new year. In this blog, Refugee Pathways highlights each complementary pathway individually and outlines one example per opportunity. We hope that this can help people who are new to complementary resettlement to better understand the different pathways and opportunities.
ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP
Academic scholarships are a promising pathway for refugee students who can seek protection through continuing higher education in another country. This is essential, as higher education remains inaccessible for a majority of refugees, with only 1% of refugees reaching university level compared to one third of all people of university age. The scholarships offered to displaced students are wide-ranging, including both short-term and long-term opportunities capturing different levels of schooling: undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, and technical schools, and ranging from private and community scholarships, traineeships, and apprenticeship programs. To be considered a complementary pathway the scholarships must support refugee or other displaced students with continuing their education by providing an in-person experience that relocates the student out of harm’s way. Scholarships may require that the scholarship recipients eventually return to their home country upon completion of the degree, or they may provide opportunities to integrate and stay long-term within their host community.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States offers a terrific opportunity supporting one individual who was displaced due to conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, or Somalia and who wishes to pursue a career in humanitarian health. The opportunity entails full tuition while the student is pursuing a Master of Public Health graduate degree at Johns Hopkins. The application process for this opportunity recently closed in December 2021, but more information about this scholarship and others can be found on Refugee Pathways. Refugee Pathways calls for all academic institutions to follow suit from Johns Hopkins and offer comprehensive scholarship opportunities for refugee students.
COMMUNITY SPONSORSHIP
Community sponsorship of refugees enables an individual, group, or organization to directly engage with refugee admission efforts to provide financial, emotional, and social support to newly-arrived refugees. These sponsorships are meant to give power to local groups to resettle a refugee family within their neighborhood.
Refugee Pathways advocates for the expansion of community sponsorship programs, such as the UK’s community sponsorship program, Sponsor Refugees, which enables refugees to relocate to their new host country due to sponsorship from residents within the host community. The United Kingdom has reached great success through their community sponsorship program, which Refugee Pathways highlighted the success of in a blog post earlier this year. The program provides support to a refugee family for one year, until a family has all the resources to live securely and independently within the host country. The sponsorship group also provides a furnished house for the family for a minimum of two years. This effort is a partnership between the UK Government and the UNHCR to identify the most vulnerable people for resettlement in the UK, prioritizing women and children at risk, persons with severe need of medical care, and survirors of torture and violence. This community sponsorship scheme is open to refugees who are living in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. The program cannot be applied to directly, but once individuals are given formal refugee status and are selected for resettlement to the UK in one of the mentioned countries, they can request access to this sponsorship program. A full list of community sponsorship programs can be found on Refugee Pathways website.
FAMILY REUNIFICATION
The protection of the family is a fundamental human right. During times of emergency, such as climate disasters and war, family members can be separated from one another as they flee to seek protection outside of their home country. Family reunification programs reunite separated families in a host country. In Belgium, the government offers a family reunification residence permit under the Family Regrouping Scheme established in Belgium to reunite families. Under this program, Syrian nationals, for example, can apply for family reunification if a family member has been granted refugee status in Belgium. In Belgium and most other countries, family reunification is possible for the spouse and underage children of the refugee in Belgium. The application process includes various steps that are outlined on the Refugee Pathways website here.
Programs such as the one in Belgium should be used as a roadmap for more wide-reaching family reunification pathways.
HUMANITARIAN VISA
Humanitarian visas are granted to vulnerable refugees, refugee families, and internally displaced people in times of emergency cases for urgent humanitarian reasons. The recipients of the visas are then able to enter another country for protection. Humanitarian visas are not a permanent immigration status, but allow a person to stay in the host country until they can safely return to their home country. While the need for these visas is high, the offerings are limited in number and high in competition.
Colombia offers a humanitarian visa that allows for a person to enter Colombia as a qualified refugee or asylee by the Colombian government at the request of the Advisory Commission for the Determination of the Refugee Status. This is known as the M Visa–Category 4. A full list of countries with humanitarian visas can be found on the Refugee Pathways website.
Written by Emily Ervin for Refugee Pathways
