A series of webinars on the alliance between the university and the local world for the shelter of migrant people and refugees

In 2015, the University of Barcelona Support Program for Refugees and People from Conflict Areas, coordinated by the UB Solidarity Foundation. The progress, growth and consolidation of the Program is closely linked to the online work with the local world. On the one hand, the insignia project of the initiative is the Course on the Transition to Bachelorsʼ Degrees, promoted by the University and co-funded in collaboration with the Department of Global Justice and International Cooperation of the Barcelona City Council. This course has held three editions and has granted forty-five refugee students under a situation of human rights and economic vulnerability. On the other hand, the town councils of Viladecans and Hospitalet de Llobregat and the Barcelona Provincial Council have contributed to the accommodation of the selected students in the Program on shared apartments, as part of the second phase of social and educational integration. It is within the context of this online work, that the UB Solidarity Foundation organized the cycle of webinars “Shelter, University and Local World”.

Program

The presentation of the cycle will be carried out by the vice-rector for Policy and Internationalization of the UB, Markus González, and the director of Global Justice and International Cooperation of the Barcelona City Council, David Llistar. The activities start on Monday, June 14, with two meetings: from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., the seminar “Local world and universities. A view from and on Europe”, on the main initiatives and learnt lessons of the universities and the European local world in the field of shelter of migrants and refugees; and from 12 to 13:34 noon, the seminar “Africa: cities, universities and refugees”, on the situation of migration and forced movement of people in Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa, and the possibilities of cooperation and exchange with the African continent. Participants in the first seminar (in English) are Graziella Gaglione, from the Sapienza University (Rome), who will present the project UNICORE - University Corridors for Refugees and the mentoring project developed at la Sapienza; Rania Tzoraki, lecturer at the University of the Aegean in Lesbos (Greece) and coordinator of the project Science4Refugees in the Aegean, and Cati Jerez, coordinator of the UB Support Program for refugees. Participants in the second seminar (in French) are Omar Fassatoui, from the UN Office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights (Tunisia), Hachemi Bentahar, from the University Mohammed I (Morocco), and Aly Tandian, from the Gaston Berger University in Sant Louis (Senegal).

The second session of the cycle (in English), on Tuesday, June 15, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. is “Middle East: cities and universities”. It will talk about synergies of programs on national and international shelter for refugees with urban and university initiatives in the Middle East. Among the participants are Anwar Kawtharani, dean of the Faculty of the Lebanese International University (LIU) and active participant in several university support projects to refugees in Lebanon, and Ashraf Shaqadan, pre-tenured lecturer at the Zarqa University (Jordan) and technical manager of the RESCUE project in this university, and Rund A. Hammoudi, director of the Office of International Relations of the University of Duhok (UoD), in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

On Wednesday, June 16, from 5 to 6:45 p.m., the third session of the cycle (in Spanish) is “America: humanitarian and refugee crises management” presented by the vice-rector for Equality and Gender of the UB, Montserrat Puig. The seminar will report on the management of humanitarian and refugee crises in America, putting emphasis on the problems and possibilities of cooperation between universities and the local world in the right of asylum. Among other participants is Manuel Ramiro, director of the Institute for Intercultural Studies (IEI) of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Cali (Colombia) and Adrián Meléndez, director of the Habesha Project (Mexico).

The fourth session of the cycle, on Thursday June 17, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., is “Local world, universities and towns without state”. It will analyze how towns without state face the forced movement of people and violations of human rights that may go with it, and the possibilities of collaboration between universities and local world in this field. The session will begin with David Bondia, lecturer of International Public Law at the UB and president of the Institute of Human Rights in Catalonia (IDHC), and the seminar will feature Jenkidar Shikhdmmar to analyze the case of the Kurdish peoples; to analyze the case of the Uyghur people, there will be Zumretay Arkin, program and advocacy manager at the World Uyghur Congress (Munich, Germany); and, to analyze the case of the Rohingya people, there will be Victoria García, international consultant in sustainable development, and Francesca P. Traglia, coordinator of Amnesty International Tarragona, who from 2012 to 2018 worked in the field of human rights in Myanmar.

The cycle will close on Friday, June 18, with the session “Migrations and environmental crises”, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., which will include a conference on the legal context of environmental refuge, by Susanna Borràs, lecturer of Environmental Law at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), with the participation of Sergio Salinas, professor of Public Law at the University of Zaragoza, and Beatriz Felipe, adjunct researcher at the Center for the Study of the Environmental Law of Tarragona (CEDAT) of URV.

Further information