These topics were dissected in our post-show dialogue featuring Dr Gül İnanç, founder of Opening Universities for Refugees and founding co-director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies, Dr Hana Alhadad, a trauma-informed consultant and researcher with extensive experience working with migrant communities, and Ms Mathilda Ho, founder of AFR-SG and Deputy Chair for the Southeast Asia Working Group at the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network. The dialogue was moderated by Ms Selene Ong, a volunteer of AFR-SG.

To kick off the dialogue, attendees were invited to respond to the question, “What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear ‘human identity’?”

Two central themes guided the panel: humanity and borders. The former focuses on the promotion of human welfare and the active belief in the value of human life. The latter explores how borders and geography affect the nature of conflicts and the responses to them. Intersecting both, the panel brings together the humanitarian work of speakers across borders and regions, from Afghanistan to Africa. The panel hosted:

• Ms Gabrielle Tay, Founder of Action of Women, Greece a women’s rights organisation dedicated to working towards a bright tomorrow with women and girls displaced by conflict, violence and persecution.
• Dr Hakim Young, a Singaporean medical doctor who has done public health, humanitarian and peace-building work in Afghanistan for over 20 years.
• Ms Bernadette Iyodu, a Rights in Exile Programme Coordinator at AMERA International, a UK-based organisation, Bernadette is a lawyer by training from Uganda in East Africa.
• Mr Amoz Hor, a PhD Candidate at George Washington University and Predoc Fellow at University of Southern California and Notre Dame University

The panel was moderated by Ms Sangeetha Yogendran, a PhD Fellow at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Ghent. 

We were honoured to have Hasan Al-Akraa, Mozhgan Moarefizadeh, Mohammed Faruque, and Lin Yanqin as our speakers, with Sarah Bagharib as the session’s host. With this amazing line-up, the session tackled questions concerning our speakers’ personal experience of using social media to highlight refugee-first narratives, create opportunities and garner support as well as how they’ve learnt to carefully navigate these online spaces.  

The defining feature of this special session was the interactive elements: We warmed the audience up with a simulation activity, in which they were asked to place themselves in the shoes of a Rohingya male refugee trying to find a job in Malaysia. At various stages, participants were asked to make decisions on which pathway to take, with each leading to a different outcome. 

This feature reminded our participants that while no two refugees share the same experience of forced displacement, they face resource constraints at each point and have to make hard decisions; furthermore, while access to social media can be a boon, the pitfalls are plenty.  

After introducing our speakers, we allocated participants to four breakout rooms. The shift to a more intimate setting allowed our speakers and participants to explore more sensitive topics, guided by our volunteer facilitators. After fifteen minutes, each breakout room got to hear from another speaker-facilitator pair.

Following this, we wrapped up the session with a persona quiz, which helped audience members to identify their strengths and how they could potentially work as an ally with displaced communities.

The war in Yemen began in March 2015, when I was in my third year of university. My campus was located near an army barracks, and the warplanes would often drop bombs in the vicinity. It wasn’t long before I realised that Yemen was not safe for my daughter and me. After I graduated, I decided to leave for Malaysia, one of the countries that Yemenis can enter without a visa.

When I first arrived in Malaysia, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know anyone who could assist me. My family used to own our house in Yemen. In Malaysia, I didn’t even know how to go about finding a house to rent. As a mother in a foreign country, with a young child in tow, I faced even more difficulties and responsibilities.

Soon I realised that there were many other Yemeni refugees around me who similarly did not have the support they needed. I decided that the community needed an organisation to fill this gap. With the help of UNHCR and local NGOs, I founded the Yemeni Refugee Women Association (YRWA) in March 2020, the first all-female platform for the community.

YRWA advocates on behalf of female refugees and asylum-seekers; we serve as their voice. As many of them have limited education, I find that it is most important for them to first know their rights – in fact, just to know that they have rights. YRWA runs awareness programmes for women on their rights, and teaches them how to deal with sexual and gender-based violence. We also organise language courses to teach refugee women basic English and Malay, so that it is easier for them to get help at hospitals and NGOs, to make ends meet, and to become part of the community in Malaysia.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically tightened borders and has made travel between countries incredibly challenging, if not impossible. For most of us, this means a year and a half of not being able to travel freely and being separated from loved ones. For refugees forcibly displaced by war and violence, however, crossing borders is not just a necessity, but a matter of life or death.

Compared to 40 years ago, not only has displacement grown in scale, it also takes a longer time for refugees to be resettled in a safe “third” country. In the last three years, the number of refugees who have spent more than 5 years in exile has jumped from 7 million to a whopping 11.9 million. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), out of the 20.4 million refugees of concern in 2019, less than 1% are resettled every year.

The last great refugee resettlement occurred after the Vietnam war, when two million Vietnamese fled their country. By the end of 1991, more than half of Vietnamese refugees had been resettled in the US, with the rest resettled in Europe, Australia, and other countries. The world saw its governments work together to protect the human rights of refugees.

From 1977 to 1996, Hawkins Road Refugee Camp in Singapore, a former British military barracks, also hosted Vietnamese refugees. Refugees were allowed to stay in the camp under the condition that they would be resettled in a third “safe” country, and would stay in Singapore for no longer than three months. I spoke to Lea Tran, a Hoa Vietnamese refugee who has since resettled in the United States, about her experience living in the camp for 12 days.

Beadlebug co-founder Naz first became aware of the refugee issue while completing her Bachelor. She took an online course on human rights and refugee rights by Amnesty International and attended talks by humanitarian workers and lawyers here.

“At that stage I was a little more politically aware and was wondering why Singapore as a country was not doing more to support refugees and their human rights,” she says.

After graduating, she worked at a startup company but soon realized she wanted to do something more impactful. “It seemed crazy to me that just because I was born here, I was living in safety and security while someone exactly like me who was born in another socio-political circumstance, was fighting for survival,” she said.

Determined to do more, Naz completed a Masters in Development Studies and International Relations, and specialized in Global Refugee Studies. A classmate from Brazil told her about a 2-week-long international summer camp organized by Lajee Center, a grassroots center for refugees, where she could learn about the situation on the ground.