UNITED conference ‘Building Shared Space’
UNITED conference ‘Building Shared Space – Best Practices in Integration’ took place in Budapest between May 22nd and 25th with the aim of discussing the most important challenges as well as possible solutions within the field of migrant inclusion in Hungary and in the European Union. OBESSU had representative at this event, as well – Milos, our programme coordinator.
Conference started in the European Youth Centre where Balint Josa, Programme Coordinator of UNITED gave a presentation about the activities of UNITED and the local Hungarian context in terms of migration and migrant inclusion.
First presentation of the second day was done by Julia Mozer from CEJI, Jewish organisation and it was about the „Facing Facts” course that aims to tackle hate speech and hate crimes by offering online courses for civil society as well as police officers and decision-makers. After that Gibril Deen from Mahatma Gandhi Human Rights Organisation gave a keynote speech presenting the challenges refugees and migrants face in Hungary and how his organisation aims to support their inclusion using sports as a tool to raise awareness and reduce racial prejudice in the Hungarian society. The afternoon continued with Tolga Karakayali’s presentation from MUDEM Refugee Support Centre, Turkey. He provided an extensive overview of the situation refugees face in Turkey in terms of access to rights and services, including access to education, healthcare, social assistance and support. When it comes to education refugee students face a lot of problems: structural (it is obligatory to have Turkish ID in order to be able to attend school), language-related (schools don’t offer language courses due to lack of resources), discrimination and exclusion by host students and their parents. In the last session of the day, Shumaem Bin Wasim, migrant community representative of Subjective Values Foundation shared his personal experience as a migrant living in Hungary, highlighting aspects of difficulties he faced in housing, education, social security and labour market integration.
The third day of the conference began with the keynote speech of Balint Josa, Programme Coordinator of UNITED on the cultural aspects of migrant inclusion. He continued by presenting two successful inclusion projects by Subjective Values Foundation and Dekra Akademie. The programme of the conference went on with a panel discussion on the role of civil society in the migrant inclusion process with the representatives of OSCE/ODIHR, the European Solidarity Centre (Poland), Network of Multicultural Associations, the International Protection Service (Italy) and the NIEM Evaluation Network. Next, Mustapha Seray Bah from Art 1. Midden Nederland shared his experience as a trainer and information officer regarding the challenges that migrants face on a daily basis in terms of discrimination in the labour market. Day three of the conference finished with a final round table session where participants engaged in a facilitated discussion on the topics of the day and shared their conclusions as well as discussed possible solutions on improving existing practices of migrant inclusion.
During the last day of the conference, participants had the chance to join a study visit at three national and international organisations based in Budapest, namely the Mahatma Gandhi Human Rights Organisation, Menedék Egyesület and Minority Rights Group Europe.
Written by Milos Stankovic, Programme Coordinator
milos@obessu.org
Parts of the text are used from:
http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/blog/2018/05/23/united-budapest-conference-report-day-i-ii/
http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/blog/2018/05/28/budapest-conference-report-day-iii-iv/
