About The Refugee Council

The Refugee Council is the leading charity working with refugees in the UK, and we rely on your donations and fundraising initiatives to run our lifesaving and life changing services.

While the Specialist Team of the Support and Advice Section and the Children’s Panel engage with clients on specific issues, the Refugee Council as an organisation engages with other aspects of refugees’ life in the UK through our welfare advice, community development, policy and campaigning activities.

As a human rights charity, independent of government, we work to ensure that refugees are given the protection they need, that they are treated with respect and understanding, and that they have the same rights, opportunities and responsibilities as other members of our society.

Our services include:

• Advice and support to help refugees rebuild their lives;

• Practical and emotional support to traumatised men and women victims of torture or rape as a weapon of war.

• Care and advocacy for separated children so that they feel safe and supported in the UK;

• Breakfasts and hot lunches served every day in our London day centre for destitute refugees.

• Practical support such as second-hand clothing, emergency toiletries, baby products and emergency packs for newly arrived refugee families or unaccompanied children.

• Food parcels and food vouchers for destitute refugees.

• “Homework club” or weekly study support sessions for school age asylum seekers.

• English language classes for unaccompanied children and adults.

• Training and employment courses to enable refugees to use their skills and qualifications;

• Support for refugee community organisations, helping them grow and serve their communities;

• Campaigning and lobbying for refugee voices to be heard in the UK and abroad;

• Keeping refugee issues high on the political agenda and discussed in the media;

• Producing authoritative information on refugee issues in the UK and worldwide, including reports, statistics and analysis.

There are many ways you can get involved and make a difference by raising funds through justgiving…

• Help us raise awareness and funds during Refugee Week in June.

• Raise funds through sponsored events in aid of the Refugee Council, or even better, recruit friends and colleagues to fundraise as a team.

• Live on £35 a week for a month to show solidarity with refugees and donate the money you have saved to the Refugee Council.

• Enter the ballot and secure a place in the London Marathon or other runs.

• Organise a cash collection in aid of the Refugee Council from your supermarket, workplace, neighborhood, faith group or community group.

Our history

How the Refugee Council was set up

In the years following World War Two there were, worldwide, large numbers of refugees and displaced people.

In 1951, a United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was held and certain international agreements were made governing the treatment of refugees. In the UK, two independent organisations were founded in 1951, namely the British Council for Aid to Refugees (BCAR) and the Standing Conference on Refugees (SCOR).

In 1981, these two organisations merged to form the British Refugee Council. The Council adopted a mission statement, the aims of which remain largely unchanged to this day. The commitment was made to provide two main services:

• to act as a focal point for the sharing of information and for the development of policies relating to refugees and displaced people in the UK and elsewhere
• to provide advice and welfare services for refugees in the UK

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, new refugee councils were established around the UK, for example in Scotland, the Midlands and Wales. To reflect this change the British Refugee Council changed name to become the Refugee Council.

Assisting refugees in Britain

Over the years, the Refugee Council and its predecessors played an important role in assisting groups of people who had to flee their country of origin.

Between 1935 and 1950, around 200,000 Poles and 50,000 other Eastern Europeans entered the UK escaping Nazi persecution, or who, following the war, were unable to return to their homelands.

15,000 Hungarians were admitted after the uprising of 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 provoked the arrival of around 5,000 refugees.

Special resettlement programmes

Throughout 1970s, large groups of refugees entered the UK under special resettlement programmes.

3,000 Chileans arrived in the six years following the military coup of 1973. Around 30,000 Ugandan Asians (many of whom had British passports and were therefore technically not refugees) settled in the UK after their expulsion by President Amin in 1972.

Under the Vietnamese programme that started in 1979, around 15,000 Vietnamese ‘boat people’ were resettled in the UK under a programme run by Ockenden Venture, Refugee Action and the Refugee Council.

In 1988, an additional 500 Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong camps were allowed to join family members in the UK.

The 1980s

In the early 1980s, around 20,000 Iranians - most of them students - and 1,500 Poles were granted extensions of their leave to remain in the UK in view of the situation in their countries of origin.

In the mid and late 1980s, significant numbers of Tamil, Ghanian, Ugandan and Somali asylum seekers arrived independently in the UK. During two months in 1989, more than 3,000 Kurds came to seek asylum.

Issues around admission policies, detention and removal of Tamil and Kurdish asylum seekers in particular, had a considerable impact on the Refugee Council’s decision to strengthen its advocacy work as well as supporting refugee communities to enable them to receive refugees.

The Bosnian programme

In November 1993, the Government agreed to allow 1,000 Bosnian men, who had been detained in Bosnian Serb camps, to come to the UK with their families (a total of 4,000). The Refugee Council together with the British Red Cross set up a programme to receive and settle Bosnian refugees.

Reception centres were established in various parts of the UK responsible for the initial accommodation and welfare of the refugees prior to the move into more independent living arrangements.

In 1995, a further 500 Bosnian refugees were offered temporary refuge in the UK, plus some 20 medical evacuees.

The majority of refugees from Bosnia did not arrive under the ‘programme’. Around 14,000 Bosnians applied for asylum independently after the war in Bosnia broke out.

Kosovan humanitarian evacuation programme

Violent events in Kosovo at the beginning of 1999 led to the largest exodus of refugees of the decade. Some 900,000 people were forcibly expelled from Kosovo. As part of a contingency plan, the UK government asked the Refugee Council and its three partner agencies, the British Red Cross, Refugee Action and the Scottish Refugee Council, to organise a reception programme for Kosovar evacuees.

By the time the war ended, 4,346 refugees had arrived in the UK. The evacuees were placed into available accommodation around UK in regional clusters. As months went on, the pressure on all evacuees to return increased. By July 2000, 55 per cent of the evacuees had returned.

As with Bosnians, the majority of Kosovan Albanians in the UK arrived independently. In 1998, the Home Office received nearly 8,000 asylum applications from nationals of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, mostly from Kosovan Albanians.

The end of 1990s

As the century came to a close, the introduction of two major pieces of legislation were irrevocably to alter the situation for asylum seekers by removing them from the welfare benefits system.

The Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 made one group of asylum seekers ineligible by virtue of the way they had entered the country. The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 removed all asylum seekers from the welfare benefits system and introduced a system whereby asylum seekers are supported by vouchers and dispersed around the country on a no-choice basis.

This has created a fundamentally new environment for asylum seekers and for the voluntary sector.

This century

February 2002 saw the publication of a White Paper on immigration and citizenship - Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with diversity in modern Britain, which sets out the Home Secretary's plans radically to overhaul the asylum system.

The Government published the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill on 12 April 2002; the contents of the Bill, currently going through parliament, are part of the package of measures outlined in the White Paper.

Other parts of the package do not require legislation and are already being phased in. The Refugee Council has produced detailed responses to the White Paper, which can be read in the Information Centre.

This is the fourth major shake up of the asylum system in less than a decade; each time the changes have been heralded as a radical reform of the system.

The debate about the right to seek asylum and the delivery of a humane system through which this right can be exercised is likely to remain in the public domain for some time.