What’s the story at the UN?
Since July we’ve been working together to tell a more positive story about refugees. We believe the UK has a proud history of welcoming people fleeing violence and persecution, and we know many are working hard to uphold that tradition. We also know that this is not always the story told in the UK press.
Stories that use language that dehumanises people have too often set the agenda — that’s why we need to change the story.
Over the summer thousands of stories of hope have been told through letters to local newspapers and in conversations up and down the country. Faith leaders have united to call on the government to do more and tens of thousands of people marched through London and Swansea last weekend with one message: refugees are welcome here.
On Monday Theresa May made her first speech as Prime Minister at the UN during a summit on global response to refugees. We hoped that she too would focus on a story of welcome and common humanity. But instead she chose to talk about the ‘dangers of uncontrolled mass migration’ and the need for stronger border controls. This message fails to acknowledge the desperation that causes many people to flee their home, and her proposal that people stay in the first ‘safe’ country in which they arrive means that poorer countries will continue to bear a disproportionate burden.
It’s already the case that 86% of the world’s refugees are hosted in poor countries. Maintaining this status quo will trap even more people in degrading and inhumane living conditions in refugee camps as well as make it extremely difficult for separated families to be reunited. May’s speech was a missed opportunity for the UK to take a lead on setting out a compassionate vision to respond.
One day later Barack Obama used his last UN speech as President to urge other leaders to do more, powerfully demonstrating that another story is possible:
‘And together, now, we have to open our hearts and do more to help refugees who are desperate for a home. We should all welcome the pledges of increased assistance that have been made at this General Assembly gathering…. But we have to follow through, even when the politics are hard. Because in the eyes of innocent men and women and children who, through no fault of their own, have had to flee everything that they know, everything that they love, we have to have the empathy to see ourselves. We have to imagine what it would be like for our family, for our children, if the unspeakable happened to us.’
Until the message of shared welcome is the story that we tell ourselves and each other, the story we read in the media and the story we hear from our politicians, please help us to keep changing the story.
