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Call for Cities of Sanctuary to support the UNHCR’s solidarity statement World Refugee Day

Call for Cities of Sanctuary to support the UNHCR’s solidarity statement World Refugee Day

Cities #WithRefugees

The UNHCR have asked the City of Sanctuary network to consider asking the cities who are a part of our network to sign onto the  #WithRefugees to support this initiative. We are recommending that all our groups make efforts to use their local authority contacts and networks and get as many as possible to sign up. This should be straightforward where local authorities have pledged support for City of Sanctuary as this will be a natural extension of what they already do.

UNHCR’s #WithRefugees campaign invites cities all over the world who are working to promote inclusion, support refugees and bring communities together to sign a Statement of Solidarity  #WithRefugees ahead of World Refugee Day 20 June.  This invitation has been extended to Cities of Sanctuary and we are asking the network to urgently work with your local authority with a view to getting them to support this initiative. This will be straightforward for local authorities who have already pledged support to City of Sanctuary.

This initiative seeks to build upon the work related to the 2017 Global Mayors Summit that took place during the United Nations General Assembly in New York and that cities all over the world are already engaged in locally and through their networks.

The Mayors solidarity statement   will be promoted through a global press release on 20 June 2018. We hope that with at least 100 cities endorsing the statement a strong message of global solidarity would be sent for families forced to flee.

All cities are welcome to sign onto the submission as soon as possible or up to 18 June, 2018.  Here is the link to the google spreadsheet that UNHCR will use  to collect signatures. Please note that statistics will be updated on 19 June 2018.

You can read the submission and the press release in English, French, Spanish and Arabic here:

For reference, information on the development of a global compact on refugees is available here.

The #WithRefugees campaign website is available here.

If you have any questions on the development of this document, please do not hesitate to contact Ms Claire Roberts Lamont ([email protected])

Thank you to all our Cities and Towns of Sanctuary for signing on!