Charter of Common Refugee Strategies

The number of international migrants has increased by 49 per cent since 2000 to 258 million in 2017, according to a report published by the United Nations for International Day of Migration. According to the report, in 2017, 26 million (10 percent) of international migrants are refugees or asylum seekers. Moreover, these numbers belonging to asylum seekers and refugees are increasing due to the internal war in Syria in recent years. This is becoming a significant issue of European Union’s and Commission’s agenda, which are “strengthening the common asylum policy” and “developing a new policy on legal migration”.

This issue increases the demand for the basic needs of newly arrived refugees and provision of these needs. This is becoming a priority social policy area within countries with asylum seekers and refugees. Lack of informative, educational and supportive tools make refugees less likely to seek remedy for health, follow advices from the authorities to find official employment. In addition, lack of language skills creates another barrier for newly arrived refugees to understand bureaucratic procedures to integrate into society.

On the other hand, lack of informative, educational and supportive tools for adult education providers and professionals working with refugees to benefit from in order to ensure quality of services provided; to better understand refugees; to better integrate them into society.

CORES addresses those issues by working with adult education providers in different program countries to ease the burden of refugees’ crises left on governments in EU; to contribute the newly arrived and host society mutual acceptance. CORES, firstly, will examine social harmony within the Programme countries, and develop a Charter of Common Refugee Strategies at the European Union level, which takes into account local dynamics and values for each partner country.

CORES aims to develop tools (online learning platform) for professionals working in the field of adult education to use during their practices. This tool will be computerized through using the information contained in this charter to be used by the adult education providers as informative, educational and supportive material in electronic format.

In this regard, for Turkey and all EU Member States, our project proposal specifically aims (1) to prepare an analysis report (needs and situation analysis) in order to inform local and national authorities, adult education providers regarding the holistic needs of refugees; (2) to inform the newly arrived about the rights of citizenship and the possibilities of acquiring citizenship; (3) to support them about the problem of housing (4) to inform and guide them about the right of access to the health services, (5) to inform them about the right and possibilities of basic education, (6) to support them in finding jobs and help them to integrate the labor market, and finally (7) to support the quick and better social harmony to newly arrived country and society (8) to create an online learning platform in order to make use of specific aims mentioned above for authorities, adult education providers, refugees.