ICMCEUROPE WelcometoEurope.pdf (5.89 MB)

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considerably. In the UK, municipality
and civil society organisations agreed
with the Home Office that 6 weeks
was the minimum period in which
reception could be planned, and the
grant agreements that underpin the
UK programme currently incorporate
this requirement. In Germany, many
cities do not receive information on
the refugees they will receive prior to
their arrival at the central reception
facility in Friedland. Refugees stay in
the centre for a period of between one
and three weeks, during which time
municipalities are contacted with information
on the refugees they are due to
receive, thus limiting the time available
to plan local reception.
The accuracy and type of information
about individual refugees and their
dependants provided to local actors also
varies across Europe. At a conference
organised by ICMC in May 2013, an Iraqi
refugee speaker recounted how, due to
a lack of efficient information-sharing
amongst actors at different levels, his
disabled child was not provided with a
wheelchair until some time after their
arrival, and the family was initially offered
an apartment on the fourth floor of a
building without an elevator. 17 In France,
NGOs operating local resettlement
programmes do not receive copies of
Resettlement Registration Forms (RRFs)
or summaries of the information they
17 See report of the event ‘A City Says Yes! Welcoming
Resettled Refugees in Europe’, held May 8 2013, at
www.resettlement.eu
contain, and must therefore re-interview
refugees to establish their personal
details and histories.
Data protection regulations in resettlement
countries can limit sharing of
personal information about refugees
amongst stakeholders, in particular
that related to health.
2.3. Partnerships to coordinate
resettlement
Partnerships underpin the resettlement
process at the many different levels at
which it operates. At the global level,
UNHCR, IOM, NGOs and national governments
in countries of asylum and of
resettlement work together to identify
refugees for resettlement and facilitate
their travel to resettlement countries.
In resettlement countries, governments
establish and maintain national
programmes in partnership with local
actors, and local actors themselves collaborate
on reception and integration
programmes for resettled refugees in
their towns and cities.
In many local resettlement programmes
across Europe, local actors
have formed partnership groups and
structures to coordinate pre-arrival
planning. In Carlow County In Ireland,
for example, schools, housing providers,
civil society organisations and
health services formed a Resettlement
Steering Committee to plan for the
CHAPTER VII