The UN refugee agency is taking part in a biennial video festival as part of its effort to tackle xenophobia and the widespread negative perceptions in Costa Rica about refugees, especially among young people.

Jozef Merkx, UNHCR's representative in Costa Rica, said the agency decided to try this new approach after the results of a recent survey showed that 57 per cent of those who knew what a refugee was had an unfavourable opinion of them. The study, which was commissioned by UNHCR, also revealed that refugees were most likely to be seen in a bad light by those aged between 18 and 35.

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Shukuru Kalunga is a high school teenager with dreams of becoming a lawyer. What sets Kalunga apart from other students are the obstacles he has overcome both before and after arriving in the United States. Kalunga and his family are refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were resettled to Tuscon, Arizona in 2008 after having lived in a refugee camp in Uganda for several years. In an effort to spread the word in his community about the way in which refugees live, Kalunga wrote and produced a play titled "The Unexpected." The work is based on his experiences as a newly arrived refugee in Tucson and it has been widely attended. Kalunga spoke to UNHCR's Public Information Intern Stephany Warner.

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As their previous owners cheerfully waved goodbye, more than 1,000 teddy bears, dolls, cars, planes and other toys began a journey that would take them from the Left Bank of the River Seine in Paris to the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania.

The toys departed early morning from Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport on an Emirates commercial flight bound for Dubai. From there they flew to Dar-Es-Salaam for their onward journey to the camp in north-west Tanzania, where they were handed over to their delighted new owners – refugee children.

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It's said that books allow you to escape to another world – that's certainly been the case for four young Somali refugees whose love of reading has helped them win scholarships to some of the top secondary schools in Kenya.

Three of the teenagers, Mohamed Abdi Samatar, Amino Mohamed Mohamud and Abdullahi Mohamed Yussuf, have spent all or most of their life in Hagadera, one of three camps housing some 300,000 mostly Somali refugees around the north-east Kenyan town of Dadaab. The fourth student, Hassan Muktar Abdi, was born in Dadaab's Ifo camp.

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UNHCR offices around the world marked International Women's Day on March 8, High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said it was vital that all people of concern to the agency, male and female, are given equal opportunities and are able to realize their individual rights on an equal basis.

Guterres, in a special message to staff, added that the theme for 2010, Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All, was "a principle UNHCR has already committed to implementing through, for example, its strategy for Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming."

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There were celebrations in Tangi last week when a new primary school for girls was opened barely 18 months after Angelina Jolie visited the settlement for refugee returnees and expressed concern about the lack of basic education facilities for children.

The popular UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador provided US$75,000 to build the school in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, which was inaugurated on Thursday in time for the start of the school year next Monday. Featuring eight classrooms, four administration buildings, a well and eight latrines, the school can accommodate up to 800 girls in two shifts.

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The UN refugee agency, with technical support from the World Food Programme (WFP), has embarked on a school feeding programme to increase classroom attendance and reduce malnutrition at two settlements for Angolan refugees in Zambia.

The programme was launched earlier this month in Meheba and Mayukwayukwa in north-western and western Zambia. The two settlements have a combined refugee population of about 25,000. Most buy or grow their own food, while WFP continues to assist some 3,000 of the most vulnerable.

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In Hagadera, one of three sprawling refugee camps in north-west Kenya's Dadaab region, there's a group of women who call themselves "survivors." They are victims of sexual violence, a scourge which reaches into the overcrowded camps, home to some 270,000 people, mainly Somalis, who have fled their troubled homeland.

Many retreat into themselves, but a growing number of these abused women are turning to a special Gender and Development Office – backed by the UN refugee agency and run by CARE – that counsels victims of rape or domestic violence and also helps to empower them, through training programmes, income-generation activities and the like. It will soon be complemented by a Gender Recovery Centre, which is due to open on December 10 at Hagadera's hospital.

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A beehive of activity surrounds Kyu Manda as seven of her fellow Myanmar refugees bend over worktables in a small room in Kuala Lumpur, sewing Christmas wall-hangings and knitting Christmas tree ornaments.

"Right now we are learning how to knit Christmas decorations," says Kyu Manda, like the other women a member of the Chin ethnic group. "The women will take home these materials and finish the items at home," she adds.

Kyu Manda is coordinator of a self-help project for refugee women in Malaysia called Mang Tha, meaning "Sweet Dreams" in the Lai dialect spoken by some of the Myanmar Chin community. "We will be selling these items at Christmas bazaars, and 90 percent of the sales go back to the women," she adds.

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Omar* endured some hard and painful lessons about life at an early age. Now, the 13-year-old refugee is learning positive things at a school in the Jordanian capital, Amman, three years after fleeing Iraq with his five siblings.

A naturally shy boy, Omar's life started coming apart when his father, a policeman in Baghdad, was shot dead by militiamen. He remembers the news of his father's death coming as a great shock. "At that moment, we knew that staying in Baghdad was no longer possible," the boy recalled.

Next came the trauma of fleeing to neighbouring Jordan to join his mother, who had gone ahead to assess if they would be safe there. "I did not think these small children would be able to withstand the journey," said their Uncle Fahad,* who brought them over hidden in a taxi. "God gave us the strength to be silent and patient until we crossed into Jordan."

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres wrapped up a tour of North Africa at the weekend after securing agreement to expand confidence-building measures for Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara. He also met some of the Sahrawi refugees in south-western Algeria and discussed asylum issues with Moroccan and Algerian leaders.

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The UN refugee agency and two of its corporate partners have announced technology-based projects that will help improve the lives of tens of thousands of refugees in Africa and Asia.
The announcements by UNHCR, computer technology giant Microsoft, and Portugal's largest energy company, EDP, came earlier this week at the annual meeting in New York of the Clinton Global Initiative. The project with Microsoft will give refugees in 11 countries access to computers, while EDP will bring renewable energy solutions to benefit some 50,000 people in north-west Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp.

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Football is in Bjorn Heidenstrom's blood. He used to play professionally in his native Norway and in the United Kingdom. The 41-year-old marketing and media manager for Norwegian Premier League team Valerenga is also a humanitarian. Earlier this year, he set out by bicycle from Norway en route for South Africa, which he plans to reach in time for the 2010 World Cup. Heidenstrom will be raising awareness about refugees as well as collecting signed football shirts from professional and amateur clubs in the countries along his route. These will be used to make the world's largest football shirt, which will be displayed in South Africa. Earlier this week, he paid an impromptu visit to the Geneva headquarters of the UN refugee agency. Before heading off to his next stop, Lyon in France, Heidenstrom talked about his grand bike tour to UNHCR's Haude Morel, Jeremy Bogen and Leo Dobbs.