Wellington receives refugee recommendations post UN meeting

Wellington refugee organisations will be among the first in New Zealand to hear recommendations received at a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) international meeting.

The Tripartite Consultations are held annually in Geneva and bring together government representatives, NGO’s and the refugee voice from around the world.

Dr Arif Saeid, Vice President of the Refugee Council of New Zealand is travelling around the country to provide direct feedback to former refugee communities on the recent UNHCR Tripartite consultations in Geneva.

Dr Saeid says “it is important that for the first time, comprehensive feedback and consultation from the UNHCR meetings comes back from those who attended directly to grassroots community groups, as well as government, NGO’s and advocates.

For too long people have been attending without accountability for reporting back to the refugee sector and being responsible for feedback both ways. RCNZ is now addressing this.”

The forum in Wellington will be on September 17 from 12:30pm to 2:00pm at the Changemakers Refugee Forum office at Level 3, 39 Webb Street.

Sessions were held at Aotea Centre at the Diversity Forum on 19 August, and on 7 September at the Christchurch Migrant Centre, organised through Christchurch Resettlement Services.

The Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement (ATCR) started in 1995. This process provides an important vehicle for strengthened cooperation between governments, NGOs and UNHCR in the area of resettlement policy and practice.

The ATCR allow for open and frank dialogue and strive to produce outcomes by forging coherent and collaborative approaches to enhance global resettlement delivery. The ATCR provides an opportunity and process to address a wide range of policy and procedural matters, including advocacy, capacity building and operational support, and serves to influence and focus joint strategies on resettlement consistent with UNHCR's global strategic priorities.

An important outcome is the tripartite relationship itself, which promotes transparency and stimulates the development of new and innovative ways to solve problems and to combine resources to improve resettlement outcomes for refugees.

Dr Saeid arrived in New Zealand as a refugee from Afghanistan with his family in 2000. Originally from Herat, he trained in medicine at the national university at Jalalbad and was appointed as a medical doctor within Medicins Sans Frontiers, working in the remote border province of Oruzgan. Together with his wife Dr Fahima Saeid, they established a rural hospital and worked to improve survival rates and care for women and children.

Forced to flee Afghanistan in 1999 with their four children, they lived in Pakistan as refugees until resettling in New Zealand. Unable to continue practice of medicine in NZ, Dr Saeid retrained in counselling at the University of Auckland.

As Community Services Manager for RASNZ, Dr Saeid has established award-winning community health worker services for multiple former refugee communities including smoking cessation, injury prevention and safety, how to access the NZ health system, and stopping family violence programmes.

In 2005 he co-founded the Refugee Road Safety Action programme which later won the National Road Safety award and provided driver’s licensing for new arrivals. He has also been closely involved with the very popular Refugees in Sport initiative which has seen hundreds of young people from refugee backgrounds engaged in mainstream sport, and with the new RYAN (Refugee Youth Action Network) project. He has also served as a consultant to the RASNZ clinical teams on treatment and rehabilitation of those affected by torture or trauma, and led the Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (CALD) training for health practitioners.

ENDS

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