World Refugee Day a Time for Reflection And Resolve

Hon Aussie Malcolm the acting Chairman of the Board of RASNZ, the refugee health and wellbeing agency, says that marking World Refugee Day is a time for reflection and resolve, not celebration.

“We can celebrate the history of New Zealand’s humanitarian tradition in the United Nations quota programme for over 40 years, and we can celebrate the successes of the many thousands of people who first come to this country as refugees. But is it a sad that war and crisis is still creating so many more refugees in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan and so many more. “

As Minister of Health and Immigration for 7 years during the 3rd National Government, Mr Malcolm established the UN quota programme in 1978 and subsequently set up the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre to receive the survivors of the Cambodia ‘killing fields’ under the Pol Pot regime, and through the Viet Nam refugee crisis.
“New Zealand is overall a good humanitarian settlement country for the most part and we accept through the established system some of the most needy and vulnerable people including women and children in urgent need of protection, medical cases, survivors of torture and trauma. We can bask for a moment in the nice words that people say about us, such as the UN High Commissioner, but we also have a long way to go to improve the social settlement outcomes for the refugees,” he added.

“The reality is that we need to get much better social settlement outcomes such as independence, integration and employment for our new arrivals and provide them with the ladder to succeed as did prior generations. The evidence shows that we can and should be doing much better in social settlement and that some of the old models are no longer working.”

As part of that initiative RASNZ is working closely with several key groups and organisations made up of and led by successful former refugees including the Ethnic Youth Education, Employment and Development Trust, and the Umma Trust to drive RYAN – the Refugee Youth Action Network.

“RYAN focuses on youth from refugee backgrounds and on the development of leadership, social integration, sport and activity, and on education, training and employment. It is a model for the future, and we are rapidly establishing strong links with employers through a model developed by our counterparts in Australia.”
RASNZ is the only agency working with the full spectrum of quota and convention refugees, and which delivers the specialist health services for treatment and rehabilitation. “There are many strengths in the NZ resettlement programmes, but social settlement outcomes are not nearly good enough and we are working hand-in-hand with Government to advance a better system with new approaches that measure outcomes and get results.”

“From this World Refugee Day, we need to reflect on what we have achieved and how much more we should be doing and how we are able to do to get far better results for the relatively small number of people who are accepted through our humanitarian refugee quota system.”

ENDS

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