How to speak to friends and family about refugees

We know how quickly misinformation can spread, and the violence it can cause. Now more than ever, having productive conversations about refugees is important. 

Here’s how to bring your family and friends into the conversation.

1. Show compassion

Avoid focusing on differences, and focus on our shared values of care and compassion. People seeking safety don’t need to ‘deserve’ our compassion, and they definitely don’t need our pity. So avoid discussions about those topics.

We all deserve to live in safety - whatever that looks like for us.

2. Reframe the problem

The violence we’re seeing hasn’t come out of thin air - a result of years of scapegoating and demonisation from politicians and the media to distract from their failures.

Remind loved ones that refugees aren’t causing issues in the country - it’s greedy politicians and their friends.

3. Avoid legal vs illegal 

Legal doesn’t always mean that something is moral (looking at you Rwanda Scheme). Avoid using phrases such as refugees should arrive via ‘safe and legal routes’.

The majority of survivors of torture we help are refugees, and for them there simply aren’t any ‘safe and legal routes’, so instead focus on saying

that wherever you come from, everyone deserves the right to seek safety.

4. Change is possible

People power works - we know this. End on a positive note, looking to the changes we can acheive by coming together as a community.

Show that together, we can create a fair and compassionate system that supports torture survivors and refugees to rebuild their lives.

Banner image credit: SOPA Images / Getty Images

How do we campaign for refugee rights?

At Freedom from Torture, we stand with refugees, and stand alongside them, to defend human rights, carrying out vital policy work that ensures the men, women and children seeking safety in the UK have the protection and security they need to recover. We campaign for them to be treated fairly when they arrive in the UK after escaping torture, and together with survivors and tens of thousands of dedicated supporters, we run campaigns, petitions, marches and contact MPs. 

Together, we fight to improve the lives of refugees and put an end to torture around the world.

What causes a refugee to come to the UK?

Refugees fleeing persecution can come to the UK for many reasons, but there are four main factors. 

• Lack of safety in other countries en route
• Connections to family or other communities in the UK
• Familiarity with the English language and culture because of our history of colonisation 
• The UK’s reputation as a place where human rights are respected, and therefore as a place of safety

Although these four reasons are the most common, it’s important to remember that many refugees do not have a choice in the country they end up in. This is because they may have been trafficked in by smugglers, or arrived by arrangement with family members who selected their destination. 

How we can support refugees and torture survivors together

For the last 40 years, Freedom from Torture has worked to support refugees who have survived torture through life-changing therapy and services that allow them to process their trauma and rebuild their lives. 

Together with your donations and solidarity, we can continue providing vital help to torture survivors and keep fighting to ensure that the human rights of survivors are restored through rehabilitation and protection, while holding torturing states to account.