Tuesday, December 9
From 7 p.m. to 8.45 p.m.
The refugee panel entitled 'A Close Look at Refugee Life,' introduces three refugee students who will speak about their backgrounds and the struggle to obtain an education, citizenship, and recognition.
Senia Abderahman, our first speaker, was born and spent her first eight years in a refugee camp in South Algeria. She and her family have been displaced from their home country, Western Sahara since the Moroccan/Mauritanian occupation of 1975. On scholarship aid, she traveled to France, Spain, and then Norway to pursue her education, before coming to the U.S.A. to attend Mt. Holyoke College in 2006. At the Nordic Red Cross College in Norway, she founded the Nordic-Saharawi language exchange program in 2004, for Norwegians to travel to the camp in the Sahara desert to teach English and for Saharawis to come to Norway to teach Arabic. Senia, after her efforts with politicians and human rights organizations in Norway, was invited to speak at the first Youth Conference within the UN in 2006, which was held in New York City. Since then, she has been invited biannually to speak at UN Conventions in NY on behalf of the Western Saharawi plea for independence from Morocco, which refugees consider to be the only solution to their displacement.
Sadiqa Basiri, our second speaker, was forced to migrate from her home country, Afghanistan, when she was six years old, in 1985, after bombardments by the Soviet Union in the sixth year of the Russo-Afghan war. She lived in Pakistan in an urban environment, where she went to refugee schools, and gained knowledge of how the schools were set up and funded. While she hoped for a university degree, she was not able to enroll in a university since her period of living in Pakistan was also the time of the Taliban?s rule. After earning a certificate in computer science and working in the Afghan Women's Education Center in Pakistan, however, she eventually returned to Afghanistan, where she began establishing schools for girls for whom education had previously not been possible. She founded four schools in Wardak, and from a program for 40 girls, funded by Sadiqa's own salary, her efforts have grown into the Omid Project involving an enrollment of over 2700 girls. She earned the Louise Gaskins Civil Rights Award for her efforts in advocating the education of girls in Afghanistan.
Amila Merdzanovic, our third and final speaker, is a native of Bosnia, and comes originally from Sarajevo, its capital. She left the country for America in 1995 during the Bosnian genocide, when over two millions people became victimes or displaced after bombings and killings by Bosnian Serbs. Most of them were Muslims. She moved to Vermont, where she began work in the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. In the 9 years she spent working in the program, she counsilled Bosnian refugees traumatized by having witnessed mass killings of their close ones in Bosnia, and by their settlement in a new country with little prospect for return to their homeland, which had changed dramatically after 1995. Having experienced such a gruesome genocide, many were inflicted by the problem of feeling safe and handling resurgent memories. Amila, who worked also both as Case Manager and Direct Services Director in the Program, says that she learned some of the most important lessons of her life during this time.
The panel taking place is an effort to bring awareness to the struggles of refugees, and to help students develop an insight into the realm they will encounter as world citizens. In particular, this panel will draw attention to the trauma of displacement. We hope for contributions so that responsible attention can be given to each speaker, as an acknowledgment of their struggles, and as hope for change.
background information
Urging Awareness of
Global Citizenship
