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| On the Front Line: Somali Refugees Seek Shelter |
| Remembering Senator Edward Kennedy: A Champion for Refugees |
| Surviving the City: Support for Urban Refugees |
| In person with Abraham ABRAHAM |
| Pakistan Emergency Thank-You |
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Tom Cavanaugh in Uganda 
We think of refugees as living in camps in remote locations. Yet today, nearly half the world's displaced people are in urban centres. Most live in extreme poverty without income or access to basic services.
UNHCR is developing new and innovative ways to ensure their safety, health and human rights.
Here are some of the ways UNHCR helps refugee women in cities acquire skills and financing so they can support their families.
Serbia: Microfinance and small bakeries empower Roma women
The Roma minority in Serbia cannot get jobs because of discrimination, prejudice and illiteracy. UNHCR helps teach them valued skills in cities like Belgrade, especially baking and catering. The women receive training in business and entrepreneurship, and small loans at low interest rates so they can open their own bakeries. They can now support their families, but they are also viewed with more respect in their new community.
Costa Rica: Colombian refugee mothers become small entrepreneurs
Colombian refugees in Costa Rica can now support their families because of training and microfinance initiatives supported by UNHCR. The women make goods and sell them in the marketplace. With the profit, they repay their small loans, so the microcredit program can continue and expand.
Photo: Colombian refugee Jairo Martinez stacks the shelves in preparation for the opening of a shop in Ecuador that was funded under an unusual group micro-credit scheme. © UNHCR/S.Eguez
Bangladesh: Sewing Fair Trade Goods for Export
Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have been living in Bangladesh since they fled their country in 1991. They cannot go home and find it difficult to integrate within the host community. UNHCR supports a project to train refugee women in 15 villages in Bangladesh to make useful needlework items for export. This ensures sustainable employment for at least 1,500 women and their families.
Photo: Returnees take sewing courses provided by UNHCR and Community and Family Services International. UNHCR/C.Schwetz
Dear friends, In the last newsletter, I shared with you our concern about the growing physical dangers faced by UNHCR workers in the field. We do all in our power to ensure the safety of our employees. Yet we can never lose sight of our essential mission: to protect the truly vulnerable. This means we must go wherever we are needed, even if it puts us at risk. Our very presence in a refugee camp is one of the ways we prevent human rights abuses. We are there to provide protection, shelter, clean water, sanitation, primary education and medical care, of course. Yet at times, our most important contribution is simply to be there, very easily identified in our blue vests, as we register the refugees so they can receive humanitarian services. We monitor their safety to prevent abuses that can happen so easily to refugees. One of our dedicated and courageous Canadian UNHCR workers, Denise Otis, volunteered as a field officer. She is the ERTeam member featured in this newsletter. Denise was deployed earlier this year during the emergency in Sri Lanka. I hope you will enjoy reading about her experience. It shows how the UN Refugee Agency calls on a multitude of different skills as we shelter and protect refugees with the aim of finding permanent solutions for them. And yet, all of this is possible only because you give us your precious and valued support. Whether we are defending the basic rights of refugees or designing camps in which families can feel safe, our dedicated workers are reassured to know that you stand with us too. Thank you for putting your heart into helping those in need and we continue to rely on your support. Abraham ABRAHAM |
