1. Case-study No. & Title:
No. 191. Program "Refugees Integration" (1996-2000) by the S. Petersburg branch of the Coordinating Council for Refugees and Migrants Assistance

Keywords

w	Mediation
w	Participation
w	Strategy Building
w	Institution building
w	Education
w	Facilitation
w	Communication
w	Co-operation
w	Partnership

2. Author information
2.1 Author’s Name
Elena Filippova

Institutional Affiliation and Contact Details:
Institute of ethnology and anthropology
Russian Academy of Sciences
Leninsky prospekt 32-a
Moscow 117334
Russia

Tel./fax: (095) 938-0043
E-mail: fvr@east.ru

Date recorded
25/09/2000

3. Good Practice Information Sheet
3.1 Local Level Good Practice:
Promotion of asylum-seekers’ and refugees’ integration into the host community. Providing them the access to the education and health-care systems. Preservation of their ethnic culture.

3.2 Location
S. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast.

3.3 Minority/Target Groups:
Refugees and asylum-seekers - citizens of Afghanistan, Rwanda and other African countries in S. Petersburg and in the Leningrad oblast.

3.4 Major Actors Involved

w	Local Government
w	Local NGO
w	Government Ministry
w	International NGO
w	Educational institution
w	Minority organisations

The actual partners involved in this project were:

w	Saint-Petersburg City Administration
w	Leningradskaya oblast Administration
w	Migration service
w	Customs, the Health Protection, Educational, Social Protection, Employment and Labor Committees
w	the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
w	the Red Cross
w	the Association for refugees
w	the Afghan committee
w	the community of refugees from Rwanda «Ichumbi»

3.5 Budget allocated by local government authorities and/or by other actors
The money for the program implementation are provided by the UNHCR and the Red Cross

3.6 Timeframe
The initiative was first proposed in 1995, it was officially launched and put into practice in 1996 and is expected to continue until 2005.

3.7 Local level good practice relation to national level ethnic policy
This is a local initiative. There is no federal-level practice of aid for asylum-seekers.

4. Good Practice Description
Since the mid 1990s a difficult situation has arisen in Saint-Petersburg where, after the dissolution of the USSR and as a result of a weak border control regime, considerable inflows of asylum-seekers started to arrive from the so-called "far abroad" countries (most asylum-seekers are Afghan citizens). Nowadays this group amounts to about 10,000 individuals but, although a federal law on the granting of refugee status was adopted in 1993, only about 10 families were granted the official status of "refugees". (The local office of the Federal Migration Services takes the necessary papers from the applicants and transmits them to Moscow, but the answer is always negative).

Lacking any legal status, these people are not only unable to get regular employment, education and health protection, but have been at times victims of persecution or put under arrest by the police. In the first years after their arrival the only organizations, that could help them (it was, first of all humanitarian assistance) were the international mandatory organizations: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Red Cross.

To tackle this situation and improve the living conditions of asylum-seekers, local state organs (including security institutions), local NGOs and international organizations have joined forces to address some of the most severe problems asylum-seekers are facing.

In 1996 a Co-ordination Council was set up - attached to the local office of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) - which includes representatives from:

w	local municipal and regional authorities
w	customs authorities
w	health protection institutions
w	educational, social welfare and labour committees
w	NGOs (Association for refugees) and associations of asylum-seekers (the Afghan Committee, the community of refugees from Rwanda «Ichumbi»).

One of the first results of this Council was to put a stop to the arbitrary and random arrests of the asylum-seekers by the police. Customs officials have been instructed that they should register asylum-seekers on the ground of having the certificates issued by the UNHCR and by the Red Cross.

After receiving petitions from NGOs and under pressure from the Co-ordination Council, local schools have started to accept asylum-seekers’ children. Moreover, since these children were lagging behind the rest of the pupils the local branch of the Red Cross, with the financial support of the UNHCR, has been organizing supplementary educational courses in Russian language and mathematics. In the year 2000 2 Russian language groups (35 pupils) were created and also 1 group of additional tuition (15 pupils) and some groups of computer training in which 72 children will study for a year. Russian-language courses for adults are also functioning.

Professional courses have also been organized for women from the asylum-seekers’ families ever since 1997, while a kindergarten has been opened in the same building where these courses take place (for 15 children), so that the women attending the courses can leave their children there. These courses should facilitate these women later finding a job.

As for health protection, the situation is more difficult. Lacking Russian citizenship and any other form of legal status, asylum-seekers are not in principle entitled to free treatment and assistance. Only the urgent medical service is available to them. To obviate only partially to this situation the Coordination Council decided to establish special medical rooms within hospitals (various specialists are available for consultation and prophylactic medical examinations are administered). During the first half of the year 2000 medical aid was given to 180 children, 147 children were vaccinated, and 70 (with their parents) in summer went away for a cure to one of the local sanatoriums. Moreover, a local medical institution signed an agreement with the UNHCR whereby the latter finances medicines and the purchase of equipment and in exchange 15 beds are reserved for asylum-seekers in need of treatment.

Finally a club for rehabilitation and integration has been opened, the goal of which is to help preserve asylum-seekers’ ethnic cultures. The people meet there, sing their songs, dance etc., and organize national festivals. The Rwandan community Ichumbi created its dance group.