Suffolk Refugee Support

Background
 
We are a charity and a company limited by guarantee, established in 1999 by concerned local people who realised that numbers of asylum seekers and refugees were arriving in Suffolk, particularly in the Ipswich area, and that there was a need for advice, advocacy and practical support.

Who are Asylum Seekers and Refugees?

An Asylum Seeker is someone who has left their country of origin due to fear of persecution and applied for protection – either refugee status or another form of international protection – elsewhere and is awaiting a decision on that application. Many have suffered imprisonment, torture, violence and threats to themselves and their families. This can make returning to their home country extremely dangerous. The UK government accepts someone as a refugee if he or she has fled their own country because of a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. This wording is from the Geneva Convention on refugees, a United Nations agreement that the UK is signed up to.

This convention was agreed by the United Nations in 1951 as a result of the treatment of refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, when many Jewish people were refused access to safe countries and forced back into Hitler’s Europe, very often to their deaths. There are still many people around the world who suffer persecution, for whom the UN Refugee Convention offers vital protection.