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Urban Refugees

Paris, France
Joined January 2016
Presence in: France
Focus: Gender-based violence, Generalist Legal Services, Housing Rights & Informal Settlements, Labor & Employment, Livelihoods, Other, Peace-building & Transitional Justice, Right to Information

The mission of URBAN REFUGEES is to improve the lives of urban refugees in developing countries. We do this in 3 ways:

1) We Support: Given the very limited assistance of aid agencies in cities, refugee-led organisations provide the bulk of the assistance to their own communities. We support those organisations to develop their capacity to organise, plan and advocate for themselves. This includes: technical assistance and training, support in governance, fundraising and communication mapping. We believe self-reliance is key to promote sustainable solutions.

2) We Connect: We help the humanitarian community adapt to the challenges of protecting refugees in cities. We use a collective impact strategy to create global connections between NGOs, academics, refugee-led organisations, urban designers, the private sector and donors, to help them share best practices and work together towards shared goals. We believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

3) We Advocate: We change top level policies affecting urban refugees through consistent advocacy efforts. We support the advocacy work of our partner NGOs in the field, we organise round-tables with policy makers and we coordinate joint advocacy strategies at the regional and UN levels. By changing one key policy, we can change thousands of lives.