When many countries are not coming upfront to support Afghan refugees who need help, Canada has committed to resettling 20,000 Afghan nationals. The Liberal party of Justin Trudeau has planned to welcome 20,000 Afgan Asylum seekers if he wins the elections. On the other hand, no other major party is against this announcement.
According to the latest report on the LifelineAfghanistan website, currently, there are approximately 3.5 million internally displaced Afghans and an additional 2.2 million refugees and asylum seekers in neighboring nations.
The private organization lifelineAfghanistan.ca will support the government to resettle about 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan who helped Canada and other Allies. The “lifeline” tradition continued in 2015 when private Canadians formed Lifeline Syria. Since then, Canada has resettled nearly 80,000 Syrian refugees.
LifelineAfghanistan is willing to support refugees from Afghanistan with all possible support. Since they also have experience working in such situations, such as when they helped Syrian refugees in 2015, Afghanistan refugee’s resettlement will also be successful.
The organization Lifeline Afghanistan will:
- Work with employers and service providers to create pathways to economic and social inclusion,
- Build awareness and engagement of civil society in the sponsorship of Afghan refugees,
- Promote evidence-based, innovative and collaborative approaches to supporting refugees,
- Work with Sponsorship Agreement Holders and others to engage Canadians in private sponsorship and to provide practical support to facilitate the process,
- Support skills assessment and trauma-informed approaches to skills development,
- Curate resources and connect to organizations supporting Afghan refugees through humanitarian relief, advocacy, settlement, service provision, research and others.
Though the Canadian government has not had announced how it will start this program and who will be eligible for the refugees status, still hopes are there that many needy people will benefit from this program.
Australia has too announced to support Afghan refugees. Australia’s visa for Afghan nationals through the Humanitarian and Migration program is the policy by the government. A special quota from Humanitarian Program has been set aside with the initial limit of 3,000. Read here the complete report.