Annual news from Ubuntu rebondit project (October 2022 – September 2023)

Since December 2017 JRS-LU people together with Caritas and Reach a Hand (ReH) serve, accompany and defend refugees in Dublin procedure, who wait for their transfer to the European country, responsible for their asylum claim. They are hosted under tents in an exhibition hall in Luxemburg-Kirchberg called SHUK.

Our annual report shows that 180 persons participated to a variety of activities:

• every day welcoming at “Caravansara Ubuntu”,
• 2-3 times a week discussions at SHUK,
• weekly football playing, biking and swimming,
• occasional outdoor activities,
• trimestral community cooking.

Nearly half of the participants were young adults, less than 25 years old.

As some of these persons are transferred to the Retention Center (CR) at Findel and as within the JRS family in Europe visits to refugees in closed centers are a priority, volunteers were formed and the visits to CR was multiplied.

Ubuntu team is made of 1 professional, Youcef Sellani, and 16 volunteers of whom 5 are active at CR. All are committed and competent persons, meeting regularly for exchange and formation. 2 students joined the project for an internship and for a summer job. Youcef participates to the closed centres visitors network of JRS-Europe, who met during the past year in Brussels and Porto; additionally, he made a study visit to Rome, to better understand.

1. the situation of refugees at arrival in Italy and 2. the reasons for their strong and profound reluctance to return to this country.

During the last semester 2 meetings with interested lawyers took place in order to facilitate collaboration, especially in favour of the most vulnerable persons.

Representatives of the Ubuntu rebondit project holding associations met on a quarterly basis, organized an information desk on Dublin and a round table at the Migration festival and invited the chaplain of Caritas at Calais to where some of the Dublin friends continue their road, trying to reach UK.

JRS-LU is convinced that the EU regulation Dublin 3 needs to be reformed, as it favours secondary movements of refugees; in fact, official figures show that only 33 out of 361 refugees hosted at SHUK in 2022 were effectively transferred to another European country (25 directly and 8 via CR).

Luxemburg 4.11.2023