15 Minutes on Refugee Inclusion and Leadership: Part One

We're marking World Refugee Day with a special two-part episode of Minutes to Change the World. Our inspiring guests are Masa Kateb and Tsering Norzom Thonsur, two members of the Refugee Advisory Network—which advocates for meaningful inclusion of refugee leaders in policy and decision making processes that directly affect the lives of refugees. Masa and Tsering share their experiences, talk about what meaningful refugee participation and leadership mean, and share their messages to policy makers, to refugees and to all Canadians.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to 15 minutes to change the world. We're in 15 minutes or less, you can learn a bit more about the world and how you can help change it for the better. My name is Darnell saucy, and I'm the host of this podcast in this episode of 15 minutes to change the world. We're marking world refugee day, by speaking to members of the refugee advisory network, which advocates for meaningful inclusion of refugee leaders in policy, and decision-making that directly affect the lives of refugees are joining us remotely today from Vancouver and Toronto. Respectively. Thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having us. Thank you. I'm really excited to speak with you. I'll just kick things off. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your experiences as a refugee in Canada? And then we'll ask you the same, please. Thank you so much for having us appreciate yourself and care Canada. I would like to, before we start to kick things off with a collective land acknowledgement on behalf of all the advisors of the Canadian refugee advisory network, as we all get to live on our traditional territories of indigenous peoples, and we promise to treat them with respect, my preferred pronouns, are she her and her? I am a global citizen. If I can start with, I was born and raised in Damascus Syria refuge here in Canada in April, 2018. And if I were to put that under an umbrella term, all to inspire, inspire humanity, to be more accepting of differences as core drive towards having more love and compassion between humans and towards all beings and to strive towards justice, peace and dignity for all, I do have experiences in the corporate sector in managerial and leadership positions, as well as for nonprofits and refugee led organizations here in Canada, as well as journalism men's professional sports back in Syria. And in terms of my refugee experience, I clearly got to see the systemic barriers that refugees go through on a daily basis. I got to have an extra layer of support on the west coast in Vancouver, where I now get to sit on many boards and have a very tangible voice that was missing on the table. Not in old times, I'm sure a lot of people are doing great work, being able to elevate the refugee refugee, being a refugee. I personally believe that it's a super power. Thank you, my system, wonderful production and searing. Would you please tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your experiences as a refugee in Canada? Oh, sure. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me on your podcast to share my life experiences as a refugee. Um, my name is Sarah[inaudible] and I'm a Tibetan. I was born in India to my parents to Batten parents who escaped Tibet in 1959 when it was occupied and invaded by the Chinese communist party. And since then I have lived my life as a stateless and also experienced throughout my life live experience of uprooting and living without an identity. So it shaped my life in such way that I began to work as an activist as a social worker, as a women's and humans rights defender. And as an activist coming to Canada as a refugee, uh, would help me in amplifying the voice of the refugees and people who face injustice. And that's how I came to Canada to live as a refugee. And today I am a proud Canadian citizen, but always consider myself as a stakeless because many of my Tibetan community who live in India and Nepal and Bhutan are still living as a stateless without any identity. So I definitely feel very privileged with my status here as a Canadian citizen in Canada, because Canada with welcoming refugee policy, I have been able to cherish my dream to participate as an, uh, human and women's rights defender and try to make a change in their life today. I'm working in Parkdale intercultural association as a manager of a settlement program and through my work as a profession and as an activist, I try my best to advocate for women and refugees rights. And, uh, so I wonder if you can tell us what's the refugee advisory network and how are you both involved in it? We're a group of refugee individuals who come from different experiences in life from different countries and backgrounds advocate, and try to raise meaningful inclusion and participation for refugees in decision making places. And when we say meaningful, it's from beginning to end. So it's the designing, the brainstorming, the implementation, the evaluation and monitoring. So for refugees to actually be included in layers of anything, that's really affects the lives of refugees, my case, or it comes to mind. So this is the very first time that this comes into life. So this is the first cohort. Um, I'm a member of the coordination committee as well alongside, um, who's also one of the advisors. And through that, we get to work on our governor's policy, as well as getting to attend different meetings with the government of Canada. I have, um, opportunity to be part of the Canadian delegation, uh, attending the UNH bilateral meetings and meeting with higher commissioner, um, critical grant from UNH going forward in terms of involvement, we're setting the ground and we're very close to becoming more proactive. Um, as we're setting our foundation at this moment, thank you, Masa. And I'm sharing, I'll ask you, what does meaningful refugee participation and leadership mean to you in the context of Canadian refugee policy discussions decision-making and support. And then if you'll tell us, please, why is it particularly important to hear from folks who identify as women and girls in this participation in school? Well, when we speak about meaningful refugee participation, we mean to say that it is important to include refugees with lived experiences in all discussions and all policymaking that is impacting the lives of refugees globally. So when we talk about the global refugee forum, which was held in 2019 in Geneva, it talked about improving the lives of refugees globally, and it also encouraged leaders and leaders to include refugees in their government delegations, where they are going to discuss policy and decision-making on improving the lives of refugees. So this is what is meaningful refugee participation. And to we encourage the Canadian government as well as global government to include refugees in a meaningful way where refugees are not a token representation, but participating as a refugee and making impact on the policy making and the decision making. And so that is why we always encourage meaningful refugee participation at levels of policy making decision making and participation in meetings. And for me, with my lived experience as a Tibetan women and refugee to all my life, I've participated in many of those international meetings at the United nations level at a national and international level. And I understood that only if you participate in those meetings, you will try to make an impact on the platform for action that is always discussed as these meetings. So when you participate, when you try to lobby the government leaders, policy makers, and the activists, you can encourage them to include your voice as a woman or a refugee or a human rights defender. So when we are able to participate, then we are able to make an impact on the decision making and the policy making Melissa, what do you think, how does refugee participation make a difference in the global refugee response? Thank you so much for, um, for all of what you've said. Um, if I can, uh, add in life or her role. So like if you have a position or if you have someone who's got experience in that thing, unfortunately when it comes to the global refugees, that is not the case. So imagine women conference about women rights, there are less than 1% women attending the conference. It's not even in the first place in this day and age, this is how it's like for refugees. So even when it comes to global discussion, there are currency, even when the last global refugee forum, 3000 delegations, 70 of them were refugees. So that's less than 3%. This is something that is considered a success for others. It is a process that has so much room of growth. Being able to take the experiences of refugees with all of these are so beautifully by, yes, they all have the umbrella of being refugees, but then each one of them have their own life experiences, work, experiences, different cultures. They bring so much to the table. So imagine being able to get all of that collective into one place and say, okay, we're going to brainstorm. And we're going to try to enhance the system that is not built to support this many refugees, refugees, unfortunately, and that's okay. And a lot of people globally, locally and nationally have gotten to that stage right now. Where's that energy we'll be able to say, okay, let's bring those experiences and be able to weave them into a Canadian policy makers. When you leave a policy for anything, ideally you would go on the ground, you would do some surveys. You would try to see like, is this policy serving this population that I want the policy to support when it comes to any policy maker about anything. So refugees are part of society. So it's not just policies that specifically relate to refugees or the wording of a refugee somewhere. There's also a lot of people say newcomers or refugees full under newcomers. And technically it's a different journey for an immigrant, from a refugee. So, and with that in place for decision for policy makers, being able to include refugees in discussion about making those policies, implementing them, evaluating them would definitely make those policies be more effective and efficient. And a very good question to ask ourselves is why are we doing what we're doing, putting a policy in place just to put a policy in place. And then I say, yeah, I'll look at it five years from now. Then it's not so beneficial. You know, time is very precious as part of our special edition of 15 minutes to change the world. Please join us for part two of our discussion, which you can find on Spotify, apple podcasts and on care.ca/podcasts.