As a former refugee himself, Dawit Arshak now works to help others settle into New Zealand.
Dawit Arshak is one of the 26,000 former refugees who have passed through the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre.
Seeking political asylum, Arshak fled Ethiopia when he was just 20 years old. He walked for 11 days through dry, desert terrain dotted with parched rivers, and over mountains. Sometimes there was no food or water. “You just had to keep walking.”
Arriving in Sudan, he was registered as a refugee and spent just two months in a refugee camp. The constant threat of snakes, belongings being stolen, and the haunting memory of his neighbour being struck by lightning while cooking outside on her portable stove, forced Arshak to leave.
He headed for the capital Khartoum, where he lived among the exiled Ethiopian community. He met his wife, had two small children and was finally accepted into New Zealand in 1998, 14 years after arriving in the refugee camp.
Arshak now works for the Red Cross as a refugee case manager and cultural advisor and lives in West Auckland with his wife and five children.
There are 18.1 million registered refugees worldwide. They’ve been forced out of their country due to their race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group or their political opinion. Resettlement can take anywhere from three months to 20 years.
Every year about 80,000 registered refugees (out of a total of 18.1 million) are rehomed around the world as part of a United Nations quota system. Of those, 750 come to New Zealand.
The USA currently has the largest quota of any country, about 70,000, followed by Australia, which has a quota of 6000 a year. In 2010 Australia, Canada and the United States settled 90 per cent of quota refugees.
According to the Red Cross New Zealand, we rank eighth out of the 26 countries with resettlement quotas. If we were to include ad hoc refugee resettlement, the acceptance of asylum seekers and other forms of refugees hosting, our global ranking drops to 102nd per capita out of 194. Australia sits at 45th per capita.
All refugees arriving in New Zealand, some toting nothing more than a small shopping bag full of belongings, pass through the centre where Arshak was taken after landing in the country.
The first thing you will experience is your freedom. It’s priceless because that’s what you lost or it was taken from you.
Arriving in groups of about 125, six times a year, they spend six weeks learning English, getting health checks and counselling, finding out about their new homeland, the workforce and employment opportunities.
Centre manager Qemajl Murati says that the service is held up as one of the best in the world, but that many new arrivals find it hard to settle into post-Mangere life after the care and attention they are shown in the first six weeks. “[In the Centre] the refugees interact on a daily basis and they are close to each other, so when they go into the community ... sometimes they get a sense of isolation.”
Refugees face a number of problems upon leaving the centre including finding work without relevant experience in New Zealand and culture shock.
For Arshak, it was the difference in social interaction that he found the most confronting. “For us it’s very important. You jump in the bus you talk to everyone and everyone talks to you. And [in New Zealand] if you say ‘hi’, sometimes you’ll get a smile, sometimes you get a response but most of the people keep walking and you are asking yourself ‘What is wrong with them?’ Actually, it’s what is wrong with me because I came to their territory.”
This is where agencies like Red Cross and Refugees as Survivors NZ come into play, offering services including refugee support volunteers, who help former refugees with tasks like opening bank accounts and joining libraries, and mental health services for those who have left the comforts of the Resettlement Centre behind.
Arshak says despite the difficulties the sense of freedom is invaluable. “That’s the main thing, you know, when you come to the country as a refugee. The first thing you will experience is your freedom. It’s priceless because that’s what you lost or it was taken from you.”
Qemajl Murati, manager of the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre and Murdoch Stephens, who holds a photo of a family from Afghanistan that he found in a refugee detention centre in Iran. Photo: Sophie Barclay
Murdoch Stephens, a Wellington-based refugee campaigner who founded Doing Our Bit, says we should be giving more refugees the opportunity to resettle in New Zealand.
Stephens first became interested in the plight of refugees when he stumbled across an abandoned refugee centre in the middle of the desert in Iran. Inside the 400-year-old building he found thousands of photographs of Afghan families who had been imprisoned in Iran.
“I started looking into what these photos meant. I came back to New Zealand and I talked to a lot of people about the afghan war and the history of the Afghan war and about what New Zealand does for refugees. I wanted to somehow do justice to these photographs and people in them and it was impossible to find them so I thought, well, how can I do justice to people like them.”
He says the current quota of 750 refugees a year is insignificant when compared to the burgeoning number of global refugees. His organisation is pushing for the quota to be increased to 1250, and for an increase in associated funding.
“The quota was established in 1987 at 800 places. It was dropped in 1997 by 50 places, because of issues around who paid for the cost of [refugees] flying here and the New Zealand population has grown 40 per cent since then. So, if we wanted to do the same as we were in 1987, to make up for that 40 per cent population growth and that 50 places drop, we would increase it to about 1250.”
Refugees make their way into countries either by being part of a country’s refugee resettlement quota, or by seeking asylum in that country.
The Government says it has a longstanding commitment to refugees, spending around $58 million on resettlement each year. This means each about $77,000 is spent per refugee who enters the country, including the cost of their flights to New Zealand. If the quota was increased to 1250, our total investment in refugees would be about $100 million.
The office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration also says it is committed to better outcomes for the 750 refugees New Zealand takes each year. In the 2014 Budget, it announced it would invest an extra $5.6 million over the next four years to help quota refugees during their first 12 months in New Zealand.
The refugee resettlement quota comes up for discussion every three years. The next decision will be made in 2016.
World Refugee Day takes place on June 20. Find out more here.
Cover photo: Former refugee Dawit Arshak and his 18-year old daughter Lulu.
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