What do refugees do

Without livelihood opportunities to help them earn income, refugees struggle to purchase even the most basic necessities, including the food they need to keep their families healthy and strong.

We distribute food items like pasta, cooking oil and milk to help them feed their families and focus on the future. After fleeing home and leaving everything behind, even the most basic household tasks can feel impossible. Refugees must wash, clothe, shelter and feed their families with only the supplies they were able to carry. Cooking utensils and dishes help refugees put their homes back together in the most basic way, and enable them to prepare safe, nutritious meals for their children.

The tools also give Syrian families the opportunity to keep an important part of their culture alive — cooking and socializing around food. Refugees often live in crowded or makeshift shelters without proper water or sanitation systems: tent settlements, chicken coops, abandoned buildings — wherever they can find relative safety. These dire conditions can have disastrous consequences on their health and morale. Without basic hygiene supplies to help them stay clean, refugees are at heightened risk of disease, malnutrition, and losing the confidence needed to face an uncertain future.

Hygiene items like soap, toothpaste and razors are essential to helping refugees stay healthy and maintain their dignity. Learn more about the water crisis in Jordan , where more than 1. But caring for a new baby in a camp or refugee settlement can be especially challenging.

We make sure parents have newborn supplies — bottles, blankets, diapers, formula — to provide for the new addition to their family.

These items help refugee babies stay healthy and safe, and support their parents as they move beyond crisis and closer to a whole, happy future. Children don't stop growing when they become a refugee, either. And because so many refugees flee with only what they are wearing, there is a constant need for clothing in refugee communities, especially for quickly growing youngsters.

Clean, quality clothing helps protect refugees from the elements — frigid winters and sweltering summers — and sets them up for success as they try to work, attend school and otherwise recover their lives. Of all the things young refugees must leave behind, one of the most significant is their education.

Many young Syrian refugees have been out of school for years due to displacement, poverty and limited educational resources in their places of refuge. The effect of this is tragic: millions of Syrian refugee children unable to learn and have a chance at a future free of crisis. Press enter to begin your search. Close Search. Want the real facts about refugees? What is a refugee? What is an asylum seeker? Do people have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach?

Channel crossings and the right to claim asylum. Are there many refugees and asylum seekers in the UK? Is the number of people seeking asylum in the UK increasing? Which countries help the most refugees? How many Syrian refugees are there and how many is the UK helping? Which countries in Europe have the most people seeking asylum? Can people seeking asylum work or claim benefits? What happens to someone when they get refugee status?

Why do people still need help here? Poverty Banned from working, people seeking asylum are forced to live below the poverty line. Waiting People are often left to wait for months or years for a decision on their claim.

Hatred We work with people who suffer horrific violence, attacks and racist abuse. Isolation Lack of access to English language lessons leaves many unable to integrate. Destitution Many people seeking safety are forced into housing that is crowded, damp and unsafe. How does Refugee Action help? Helped refugees to rebuild their lives in the UK.

The UNHCR updated its guidelines to include refugees for reasons of gender or sexual orientation in There are about 17 million displaced persons across the African continent, the Guardian reports , and only a small proportion of them are reaching the shores of the European continent.

Many end up in sprawling, informal refugee camps like the town of Monguno in northeastern Nigeria. Refugees fleeing hunger can, of course, also be escaping from other factors at the same time, including the rise of extremist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria and the impacts of climate change. Officially, climate change is not yet a valid reason for an asylum claim.

In , the first climate change refugee asylum case was shot down by the New Zealand High Court when a Kiribati man attempted to claim that status by law. But as man-made climate change worsens, and oceans rise, the and conventions may need to expand their scope.

Sign up Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Apple or. Rerequest with Facebook. This account has been deactivated. Refugees have been all over the news. And how do people become refugees? But between and now, the number of refugees and displaced persons has skyrocketed.

Global Citizen is bringing you five of the biggest ones: Embed from Getty Images 1. Embed from Getty Images 2.