We have had tremendous success with resettlement recently. On October 17th, 7 of our clients were resettled to new lives in the United States.

This number included one of our beloved office administrators, who resettled to  Florida. She hopes one day soon to move to Washington, DC, and work as an Arabic translator. Also on October 15, a mother and her two daughters were successfully resettled to New Mexico. Everyone at RLAP familiar with their case breathed a tremendous sigh of relief—they were in incredible danger in Cairo and had moved apartments three times in order to hide from their persecutors, who had spent over a year sending the older daughter weekly and sometimes daily death threats. We are thrilled that they have the opportunity to begin news lives free from this fear.

Recently, a driver appeared at RLAP’s door. We had never seen him before, but he explained that he had driven a man, wife, and son to the airport that morning. The driver reported that this man had burst into tears and started kissing the ground and thanking God at the terminal. The driver came and told us because he was so moved, and thought we should know how happy we had made this man. It turns out he was one of our clients who had finally been resettled after a particularly long wait. We had lost contact with him and had been worried—and now he is in the United States! .

Of course, for every success story, there are at least 20 clients still in desperate situations in Cairo. We still have hundreds of clients with active cases. Their needs, and our abilities to help, give us the stamina to keep going despite the obstacles to serving refugees in Egypt. More and more clients keep coming to our office, and our reputation for helping people—both psycho-social counseling as well as resettlement—continues to grow. We are very busy, and the work continues to be incredibly inspiring and fulfilling.

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This post was written by Stephanie Biedermann, RLAP’s Legal Director since June 2009.

What RLAP does: to date, RLAP has advised over 700 clients on a variety of legal matters related to life as a refugee in Cairo.  Our staff and interns conduct extensive interviews in order to analyze whether a particular client satisfies the legal criteria for refugee status and for resettlement.  Then we prepare testimony, communicate with UNHCR, the IOM and USCIS on our clients’ behalf as necessary, and prepare them for their resettlement interviews.  If a refugee’s claim for resettlement has been rejected, we can assist him or her in drafting an appeal.  RLAP’s team includes a Legal Director, Psycho-social Team Leader (a trained medical doctor), two psycho-social counselors, two office administrators, and now, 20 part-time and full-time interns. We are currently in the process of hiring a new Program Director with the help of recent foundational support.

Youth LEAD Project Two weeks ago, the St. Andrew’s office was abuzz with news – youth in three areas of Cairo, who had previously maintained violent rivalries, had agreed to a peace treaty. Phones of the Youth LEAD staff were ringing incessantly, the excitement of the young men buzzing at the other end. The night before, over 70 young men had met and agreed to peace.

The real story here is that this is not just any other peace agreement. This agreement was generated among the young men themselves after a respectably long period of non-violence, without the intervention of the staff at Youth LEAD – though quietly encouraged and supported.

Within these youth and youth in other communities prone to gang violence, numerous peace treaties have been established. However, such peace treaties are often brought about due to initiation from outside, well-intentioned but misguided mediators. What often results is a declaration for peace that looks pretty on paper, but is really just a conglomeration of empty words in the name of peace.

At other times, peace treaties surface in direct response to certain acts of violence. While this idea is on the right track, it too is an incomplete solution. The mixing of emotions action can be unstable and at risk for collapse under the pressures of vengeful forces and pre-existing conditions in the community, the same conditions that lead to gang-violence in the first place. The staff at Youth LEAD work not to produce a document, but to identify and tackle the underlying conditions that lead young men to choose gang-violence.

The Youth LEAD project operates 4 centers currently, with plans in the works for 3 more centers, to provide at-risk youth with an alternative to the streets. The young men can take English classes, receive tutoring, life skill classes, attend demand-driven seminars, take hip-hop lessons, seek counseling, use computers, or simply hang out in a safe environment. By offering these young men resources and support, they are all working together to eliminate the perceived need among youth for gang-violence. And in effect, supplying these young men with the tools and resources to resolve their conflicts and establish their own peace.

By fostering a safer environment, the Youth LEAD project encourages these young men to forge peace themselves. The fact that this peace treaty arose after a period of peace suggests development of real progress, rather than impassioned reaction to a recent occurrence. Youth LEAD fosters and encourages peace, but not just in the name of peace – more importantly, in definition. And sure enough, the sentiment of accomplishment has echoed throughout the Youth LEAD centers with celebration, pizza parties, and the creation of an official banner, painted excitedly the night after the young men shook hands in peace.

For a flash-point background on gang violence in Cairo, see this BBC article.

At St. Andrew’s, this is a familiar story, and often, the tale is succeeded by a mother’s absence from classes for two – four years until the child can be more easily babysat by neighborhood mothers. Absence from classes means these mothers lose much of the language and literary skills they have accrued in St. Andrew’s courses, and even worse, they must abstain from vocational training that offer much needed income-generating opportunities.

Dedicated single mothers like Someya shouldn’t have to sacrifice their personal development for the sake of their children, but without help from their communities, there is precious little time to devote to one’s self.  Fortunately, starting last spring, informal free childcare services offered to students of St. Andrew’s adult evening classes meant that Someya didn’t have to choose between caring for her new baby and her own personal enrichment. 

This winter, St. Andrew’s will expand these services significantly by starting a new preschool.  The Mother & Child’s Early Childhood Education program is just shy of being completely funded and hopefully, will open its doors at St. Andrew’s downtown location in January 2009. The preschool will provide kids from 2-5 years old with a safe environment to learn through play while freeing up their parents to pursue work or education during the daytime hours.

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Refugee families rarely fit a traditional, two-parent structure.  The violent rupture that forces refugees to flee their countries of origin can also tear families apart.  Family members may be killed, become separated from one another, or go missing for several years.  All too often, children loose their parents as a result.  Single-mother households like Someya’s are common among refugee families, and in cases where neither parent is present, the burden of child-rearing falls upon an aunt, uncle, or older-sibling.

Kathy Kamphoefner, StARS co-director, believes that early childhood education is critical for refugee children, who have experienced the trauma of displacement at an early age.  Innumerable studies have shown that early childhood education produces big benefits in terms of long-term academic achievement, grade retention, and social adjustment.  Kathy hopes that the preschool will offer a haven of stability to counterbalance the chaos in the children’s lives.  Changing conditions in their home-countries or in their legal status as refugees may uproot families repeatedly during the children’s formative years, at a time when most kids are in school.  Early socialization in a classroom setting helps to minimize the damage done by later interruptions in their education, making it easier for kids to integrate into a new school.

Drawing advice from friends, colleagues, and former preschool teachers in the US, Kathy says that lessons will be child-oriented, encouraging kids to learn through play.  The preschool director and teaching assistants will target basic skill sets, like learning the alphabet, numbers, colors, and counting, which will prepare them to graduate up to kindergarten and beyond.  Early exposure to English is also a priority, with a long-view towards preparing kids to pass British and American university entrance exams, such as the TOEFL, when they get older.  The program will also provide refugee women in Cairo with further opportunities for employment and skills training, since area refugees will be given top priority for teaching positions.

All of St. Andrew’s directors are excited about the potential of the new preschool. For Fiona Cameron, the director of the Children’s Education Program (CEP), it means kindergartners will be better prepared for CEP classes. For Pasquale Thomas, director of the Adult Education Program (AEP), the preschool will ensure he doesn’t lose so many of his female students every year. And most of all, for Someya, St. Andrew’s new preschool will expand the options currently available to her, and single mothers like her, whose struggle has so often defined itself as an ultimatum between education and motherhood.

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This post was written by Alyssa Miller, StARS volunteer from July 2009 – August 2009. We wish her the best back at grad school in Texas!

One of a series that we hope to initiate, profiling some of the staff and community members at St. Andrew’s.

“With all the loss that people have, money will be the least that you care about,” he advised me as we discussed the extortionist fees charged by local banks. I was surprised by such a blasé attitude towards personal finance from someone who had been forced to flee his country and with it his lucrative future as a doctor. By the end of our conversation it made more sense.

He had seen his father die in his own arms. A soldier had held a gun to his head and told him to revive a fallen comrade who was clearly dead. His aunt was dying of a brain tumor. The woman who had raised his parents had died of heart failure. His own mother was showing signs of mental unease. An Iraqi doctor working in an Iraqi hospital, he had seen more unnecessary death during his residency than many doctors see in their entire careers. Dead bodies peppered his commute to work; sectarian expenditures tossed to the roadside like spent bottles. The body of a coworker was amongst them; a doctor shot dead on his morning commute. If there was one thing he learned during this time, it was that “there is nothing that will be with you forever.” A sad truth from a man who seemed only to want happiness.

Here he was in Egypt, being told that his medical residency in Iraq would not be recognized for the purposes of a license to practice medicine in Egypt. A qualified medical doctor from the top medical school in Iraq—with the unparalleled depth of experience that war brings to the surgical theatre—was now being met with the sad reality that his expensive application for a medical license in Egypt was to be rejected without appeal and without an official letter explaining the reason.

His residency was proceeding swimmingly until bombings and armies put a stop to it. The commute to the hospital became too dangerous; his mother implored that he—the only man left in the family—stop putting his life at risk. Their support networks had dissolved; he was the lone man in a house of women. A home with one man is a vulnerable one when strength is measured in guns and manpower; roaming militias based their targeted killings on last names and a panoply of affiliations. Leaving the women alone all day was a deadly gamble. For a man who had spent most of his life amongst the safety of bookshelves and academia, this new and violent anarchy was particularly unmanageable.

When working at the hospital became impossible, he presented his services to a local Red Crescent clinic. But even humanitarian aid groups were not immune to the targeted violence; the clinic he worked at had to be closed when a militia paid visit with guns lax at their hips, explaining that it would be best for everyone if the clinic ceased its operations. The clinic, which had been delivering food and medicine to a destitute population, was shuttered because of the unspoken but deadly ultimatum: close or be killed. It seemed that our determined doctor was unable to realize his dream of healing others everywhere he tried.

Shakir and his family fled to Egypt in an effort to escape the long arm of sectarian violence; funding their flight through selling a home for but thirty percent of its actual value. The money was put in Egyptian and Jordanian accounts out of fear that if put in Iraqi banks it would disappear. In Iraq he was compensated for the medical residency that conflict prevented him from finishing, but in Egypt this residency was not only officially unrecognized, but its equivalent was a twelve-month at-cost internship running into the thousands of U.S. Dollars. He paid for this, unaware that even after his medical degree was certified by Egyptian authorities he would be denied a license to practice medicine in Egypt.

It seemed every attempt to change his life for the better was met with another disappointment. But then he discovered St. Andrew’s and with it a community of refugees who understood his sense of desperation. Having entered the medical profession with the aim of relieving what ails people, it was sickening to observe helplessly as the people of his country died in his care. More sickening still was the notion that outside of Iraq he would be prevented from fulfilling his professional goals. At St. Andrew’s, he has once again chartered a path towards satisfaction and fulfillment through counseling other refugees while pressing forward with his own petition for resettlement to another country where he will be able to work and live a normal life. But this petition is time-consuming and requires specialized knowledge of the procedures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as international human rights law.

Expecting refugees to simultaneously fend off the ever-encroaching jaws of penury and the smog of listlessness that accompanies such great upheaval, all while acquainting themselves with the intricacies of UNHCR policy and international refugee law is as unrealistic as it is cruel. Shakir’s story demonstrates the overwhelming string of cataclysmic loss that typifies the strife of refugees; a seemingly endless avalanche of tragedies. While their status continues to deprive them of basic human dignities—the right of a doctor to work as a doctor, the right of their children to attend schools—it is this precise lack of opportunity that makes them appealing cases for resettlement through the UNHCR. That is where St. Andrew’s and the Resettlement Legal Aid Project (RLAP) come in; giving this persecuted and impoverished population the tools to build a new future for themselves.

“You can’t be yourself and you can’t just be human,” reflects Shakir on his time as a refugee. But he smiles while recounting the good work he is doing to improve the lives of others through the St. Andrew’s community. Deprived of basic rights and dignities for so long, it is encouraging to see the tired grin of satisfaction creep across his face.

This profile was contributed by Brendan Rigby, St. Andrew’s volunteer since June ’09.

Getting started at the June Bazaar.

St. Andrew’s had yet another successful Bazaar this June. On the 27th, we invited everyone in the greater St. Andrew’s community to come enjoy dance and music performances in Guild hall. We had booths selling wares from North and East Africa , henna artists, and some amaaazing food. More than a few of our volunteers took both their lunch and dinner at the bazaar.

We are all well aware that St. Andrew’s always has a very distinct feel from the rest of its Cairenes surroundings, but on the 27th, the atmosphere at St. Andrew’s was utterly jubilant. With revelrous dancing, bursts of music, food to fill our bellies and cool drinks to hold back the heat, artists displaying their works to “ohhs” and “ahhhs,” and a sense of community comfort that we’ve come to love being apart of here. We can’t wait until the next one!

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights took time years ago to explain a little about refugee in Egypt and we can’t do much better in explaining than they did. So here you are–a brief review.

Where Do They Come From?

In addition to Palestinians, who are estimated to number some 50,000, Egypt is a host to refugees from some thirty-five other nationalities. The largest number of people seeking asylum from Africa are from Sudan (some 60%), but refugees also arrive from Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Somalia. Refugee applicants in Egypt also include people from Afghanistan, Albania, China, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Ukraine – in addition to those who seek asylum from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen.

Who Grants Asylum?

The Government of Egypt (GoE) does not conduct status determination interviews; this work is done by the Cairo offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR).

The Law in Egypt

Egypt has not enacted a domestic law regulating refugee matters. Article 53 of Egypt’s 1971 Constitution provides the right to asylum ‘for every foreigner persecuted for defending the peoples interest, human rights, peace or justice’. The GoE ratified the 1969 Organisation of African Unity’s Convention on refugee (which includes the 1951 UN Refugee Convention) in 1980. It separately ratified the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol in 1981, but at this time it entered eight reservations, the most important being Art. 12 (personal status), Artic 20 (rationing), Art 22 (Access to primary education), Art. 23 (access to public relief and assistance) and Art. 25 (labour legislation and social security).

The Numbers

It is not possible to provide a good ‘guesstimate’ of how many refugees there are in Egypt. Why? The Sudanese, for example, defy any attempt to provide accurate numbers. In 2000, the World Council of Churches reported that ‘between two and five million Sudanese have come to Egypt in recent years an more are arriving each week.

Before 1995, Sudanese were allowed to enter Egypt and live as nationals as regards access to education and work. Since the attempt on Mubarak’s life in Ethiopia, which was allegedly carried out by Sudanese, all newly-arriving Sudanese refugees are required to possess visas and apply for asylum as do other nationalities.  The only ‘hard’ numbers of those provided by UNHCR on the numbers of people they have recognised which amounts to some 7,000 to 8,000 in the past three years. But at the same time, significant numbers of these recognised refugees have been ‘resettled’ to countries such as Australia, Canada and the USA.

What is known is that there was a ‘backlog’ of applicants for asylum that was nearly 20,000 at the beginning of 2002. Moreover, in the past five years UNHCR has rejected roughly the same number of asylum applications. Most of these people who now have closed files continue to fear persecution in the country from which they fled and there is no record of how many continue to live in Egypt.

In most European countries there is provision for granting ‘humanitarian’ or ‘B’ status to such persons who do not meet the standards are the 1951 UN Refugee Convention but who cannot be returned to their countries because of the continued threat that exists to their lives. In Egypt, such a provision does not exist so persons with ‘closed files’ remain on the margins of society living illegally without valid passports or residency permits. Although the Egyptian police usually turn a ‘blind eye’, there are enough arrests and removals to ensure that all people without permission to reside in the country live an extremely insecure existence.

Thanks to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights for their useful resource! You can find their page here.

We've made stairs for the newly renovated 2nd floor of the bowab's old house (now housing the RLAP office) and a small set of stairs to connect to the temporary classrooms not yet built. You can see the hope we have in providing quality education to refugees physically manifested--stairs to a room not yet built or funded!

We’ve begun renovation on our old bowab’s (doorman’s) building, which now houses the Resettlement Legal Aid Project. The office was moved into this small structure after its first floor was partially renovated in August ’08 to at least get the office’s legal services up and running. But finally, nearly nine months later, we’re fixing the second floor that has been in a sincere need of essential restructuring, a new roof, and what we’re most excited about, a secure stairway!! You cannot imagine the excitement a simple case of metal stairs can bring to a community! Thank you everyone who made this possible and we look forward to putting the renewed space to good use!

~ StARS team, since 1979

Welcome seems a little strange to say because, to be honest, St. Andrews is new to this too! We’re trying blogging for the first time in order to make an effort to keep up with our wonderful volunteers as they spread across the globe and the many others that support our work through other means: donations, advice, and sometimes just virtual cheer leading.

For those who are new to StARS:

St. Andrew’s Refugee Services (StARS) is a multi-program refugee community center in Cairo, Egypt. We provide programming to refugees from Southern Sudan and Darfur, Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq and other nationals from 32 different countries. Services are delivered to refugees based on need and without discrimination of gender, ethnicity, national origin, tribe, or religion, while refugee staff members help guide the programming of StARS.

Our year-round programs include the Children’s Education Program (CEP), Adult Education Program (AEP), African Refugee Cooperative (ARC), Legal Aid Project (RLAP), and Youth Leadership, Education and Access to Development (Y-LEAD). These programs offer in-depth services to approximately 1500 refugees annually. And though we always push to do more, we’re really proud of them!

To those who know us:

Thanks for visiting us–virtually, this time–and message us on here if you want to write something about your experience with StARS! From everyone on the StARS staff, hope this aptly chronicles a bit of what we do in Egypt’s megalopolis, Cairo.

~ Susannah, Development Officer and StARS fan since 2004, when I was volunteer English tutor