How can we best protect people displaced for environmental reasons? In this episode María José Maldonado and Natalie Jade Catanach interview Manuel Marques Pereira, Head of Division of Migration, Environment, and Climate Change and Risk Reduction, at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM – UN Migration). Mr. Pereira discusses the protection risks associated with climate-related migration, the difficulties in disentangling the environment from different causes of movement, the role of...
Jun 12, 2023•23 min•Ep. 24
How are refugee experiences gendered, and what is the role of education in empowering female migrants and refugees? In this episode, Freya Thompson chats with Olivia Darby, Chief Programmes Officer at the WONDER Foundation. A women-led charity, WONDER seeks to support women and girls through education. Since 2018, the organisation has been working on a collaborative project across the UK, Poland, Slovenia, and Spain to empower migrant women, and it has recently become involved in supporting Ukra...
Jun 11, 2023•30 min•Ep. 23
What role can refugees themselves play in responding to displacement, and how can we improve mechanisms that allow displaced communities to have an input into relief efforts? In this episode, Yanis Amirat and Maud Guibert sit down with Farida Abdulrahman, a Syrian refugee and former Head of Accountability at Violet Organization. Based in Gaziantep in Turkey, Violet Organization is an NGO that has been working with internally displaced persons (IDPs) and communities in Northern Syria since 2013. ...
Jun 11, 2023•25 min•Ep. 22
Accessing employment is a challenge facing many refugees wanting to integrate in a new country. Trampoline is a London-based café that aims to tackle this by providing refugees in the city with meaningful employment opportunities. In this episode, Rebecca Huggett, Sales Manager at Trampoline Café, joins Katherine Velastegui Córdova in discussing its mission. Rebecca shares her thoughts on the difficulties facing refugees in the labour market in the UK, the role of employment in facilitating inte...
Jun 11, 2023•19 min•Ep. 21
In this episode, Jasmin Arciero and Oliver Nixon interview Alexa Netty, the trustee and chair of the steering committee of SolidariTee. SolidariTee is a charity that supports NGOs offering legal aid to forcibly displaced people, and so they begin with a discussion on the importance of legal aid as a key facet of refugee support. They also touch on debates surrounding the role of NGOs in refugee crises: where they fit within a complex system of assistance and whether and how it is possible to o...
Jun 17, 2022•34 min•Ep. 20
For years, thousands of forcibly displaced people have been left in limbo in Calais, France, where they suffer from a lack of care and police crackdowns. Recently, as the Russian War is devastating Ukraine and forcing millions to flee, European countries (including France) are opening their borders and homes to Ukrainian refugees. What explains such different responses? In this episode, Johana Bretou-Klein sits down with Ruby and Holly, two volunteers of the Calais Food Collective , to discuss t...
Jun 17, 2022•22 min•Ep. 19
Following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans fled to foreign countries. The UK evacuated around 18,000 people, who are now placed in temporary housing. Organizations such as British Red Cross are now seeking to assist Afghans resettle into more permanent homes. In this episode, Sveto Muhammad Ishoq speaks to two guests: Halima, a British-Afghan evacuated last year from Kabul, and Nadine, the Afghan Relocations Project Officer at the British Red Cro...
Jun 16, 2022•30 min•Ep. 18
Little has captured our attention like the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th of this year. Constituting Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, the UN estimates that more than 14 million people have fled their homes, with nearly 7 million Ukrainians seeking asylum in neighbouring countries. One of these people is Olena, a 24-year-old Ukrainian national working in the film industry in the suburbs of Kyiv when Russian forces invaded. In this episode, Madison and Sydney sit d...
Jun 16, 2022•35 min•Ep. 17
In this podcast, Yujia Zhang invites two women, Nadia and Fatima, to talk about their stories as both refugees and social workers in Lebanon. Nadia, a third generation Palestinian refugee, lives in the Beqaa Valley. Currently, she is the director of Manara centre of the Lighthouse Peace Initiative, a NGO offering English and art training to refugee students. Fatima, a successful businesswoman in Damascus, became a refugee in 2013 due to Syrian war and fled to Beirut. In 2019, she founded her own...
Jun 15, 2022•33 min•Ep. 16
This podcast explores the physical and emotional challenges that arise from refugees' journeys to safety. Sam, a former refugee from Iraq, describes his experience gaining asylum in the UK and how he has persevered through years of challenges. Sam discusses his reasons for fleeing, his time living in displacement, and his assimilation to his new community in the UK. Molly is an MSc student in the Development Studies program. While completing her undergraduate degree in Florida, Molly immersed he...
Jun 15, 2022•26 min•Ep. 15
In this episode, Leah Trotman chats with Pablo Escribano, the Regional Thematic Specialist at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for the Americas and the Caribbean on climate change and migration. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported that nearly 3 million people across the Caribbean and United States were displaced in 2017 due to Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey. With a rise in global warming, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) can expect an increase in sea l...
Jun 14, 2022•43 min•Ep. 14
Today’s theme in the Refugee Realities podcast series focuses on a birds-eye perspective of the challenges facing the global humanitarian system. And who better to speak with than the person who was responsible for coordinating this system: Sir Mark Lowcock, the former ‘Relief Chief’ of the UN humanitarian agency. Nina and Shanyce discuss Mark’s experience during his 4-year posting, highlighting the power of the individual stories that stuck with Mark along the way.
Jun 13, 2022•30 min•Ep. 13
In this bonus episode, Kaweh Beheshtizadeh speaks to Jenifer Elmslie about his journey from asylum seeker to refugee lawyer. Kaweh sought asylum from Iran after participating in pro-Kurdish activism in the country, a group which is heavily persecuted and discriminated against. After a short stay in Turkey under the protection of UNHCR, Kaweh entered the UK in 2004 and gained asylum status after one year. His experience motivated him to study for the bar at University and he now represents the ca...
Jul 12, 2021•27 min•Ep. 12
In this episode, LSE Master’s student Ezgi Ilhan interviews Valentina Spinedi, Director of Student Advising at Paper Airplanes. Paper Airplanes is a fully virtual non-profit organization providing educational services to conflict-affected individuals, focusing on displaced Syrians with refugee status. Though many organizations struggled to transition to operating remotely after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Paper Airplanes had the unique advantage of already being virtual, proving advantag...
Jun 18, 2021•20 min•Ep. 11
In this episode, Konstantina Mirtzani and Valeria Miglio speak with Giulia Cicoli, co-founder and Advocacy Director of Still I Rise NGO. Still I Rise was first founded in 2018 to address the lack of appropriate education services for minors living in the Samos hotspot. Since then, the organisation has opened schools for displaced youth in Syria, Kenya, and Turkey. These projects focus on providing education in emergency contexts (Syria, Greece) as well as in protracted refugee crises (Kenya, Tur...
Jun 18, 2021•35 min•Ep. 10
This podcast takes listeners to the forefront of the internal displacement issue in Somalia where Mogadishu officials are spearheading a policy to address the needs of the hundreds of thousands of IDPs in their city. In the first part of the podcast, Durable Solutions Consultant for the Municipality of Mogadishu, Amun Osman, speaks with Research and Report Officer for the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement, Mark Yarnell (speaking in his personal capacity), about the...
Jun 17, 2021•49 min•Ep. 9
In March 2021, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, made headlines with the announcement of the Governments ‘New Plan for Immigration’. This ‘New Plan’ outlined the most significant overhaul to the UK’s existing refugee and asylum policy in decades. The government stated that this overhaul will create a ‘fairer’ system and insists that it was ‘breaking the business model of people smuggling networks and protecting the lives of those they endanger’. However, despite the government's claims, the new p...
Jun 17, 2021•38 min•Ep. 8
In this podcast, Gabriele Canavan and Taitum Caggiano interview Dr. Aiko Holvikivi and Dr. Audrey Reeves who recently published an article titled “Women, Peace and Security After Europe’s Refugee Crisis,” and they are here to tell us more about the nexus between the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and the refugee security regime. For background, the United Nations’ Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325 is often considered a watershed moment for WPS activists seeking gender equity within ...
Jun 17, 2021•42 min•Ep. 7
In this interview by MSc student in International Development, Gender and globalisation Jenifer Elmslie, Mustafa Ali discusses his experience leaving Afghanistan as an unaccompanied minor at the age of 13, and his 10-year journey to gain asylum in the United Kingdom. Ali discusses his journey to graduate from Cambridge University in 2017with a degree in Architecture. He talks about the difficulties he encountered during his time studying for his undergraduate degree while simultaneously attempti...
Jun 16, 2021•22 min•Ep. 6
In Western countries, refugees are often seen as a burden, as an indistinct mass of people threatening our “values and well-being”. In this podcast, MSc student in Gender, Development and Globalisation Simona Camillini hears the incredible stories of two of the hundreds of thousands of people who every year are forced to flee their homes and leave everything behind to start a new life elsewhere. Paul is from Nigeria and, since 2014, he has been living in Sankt Poelten, a city in Lower Austria ne...
Jun 16, 2021•20 min•Ep. 5
In this podcast, MSc student in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies Maria Harb meets two inspirational women - Victoria Lupton and Fida Alwaer. Victoria has been living in Lebanon for the past 10 years and is the co-founder of Seenaryo, a leading specialist in theatre and play-based learning with marginalized communities in Lebanon and Jordan - in particular refugee communities. Fida was forcibly displaced from her home country Syria and arrived in Lebanon in 2012. In 2017, sh...
Jun 15, 2021•33 min•Ep. 4
Refugees and asylum seekers are all too often seen through the narrow prism of their experiences of displacement, but this is only one part of the picture. Refugee artists and their community partners challenge those limits daily through storytelling, creative space-making, and movement organising. Natasha Menon and Sarah Doyel, two International Migration and Public Policy master’s students at LSE, talk to two advocates about the role of art in refugee advocacy work. Usman Khalid and Emily Chur...
Jun 15, 2021•34 min•Ep. 3
The UNHCR estimates that 90% of refugees are produced in countries that are the most vulnerable and the least prepared to adapt to the repercussions of climate change. In this episode, MSc student in Health and International Development Aimée Wolff interviews Andrew Harper, special Advisor on Climate Action to the UN Refugee Agency, who illuminates the increasing complexity behind the drivers of migration since the creation of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the implications of climate change on...
Jun 14, 2021•32 min•Ep. 2
Inspired by the decades-long struggle to collect consistent data on international migration globally, this podcast episode explores recent data innovation efforts made by the International Organization for Migration’s Global Migration Data Analysis Center (IOM’s GMDAC) in Berlin, Germany. In this episode, MSc student in International Migration and Public Policy Sarah Phillips spoke with two LSE alumni: Niklas Sievers, a former student in the MSc in International Migration and Public Policy progr...
Jun 14, 2021•46 min•Ep. 1
