As Nova Scotia welcomes refugees from Afghanistan, the province draws on its experience from the Syrian refugee crisis. However, there are significant differences between the situations.
Canada plans to welcome 40,000 Afghan refugees over the next two years. It’s unclear how many people will end up in Nova Scotia. As of late November, the province had welcomed 30 people of the almost 4,000 that had already arrived. Another 1,700 were in transit points around the world.
“The responsibility of supporting all refugees when they arrive really goes back to all of us,” says Jill Balser, Nova Scotia’s minister of labour, skills, and immigration. “We all have a role to play in making sure people feel welcome and safe.”
Balser, who previously worked as a settlement worker with the YMCA in the Digby area, says the Syrian resettlement effort will help how organizations and people assist refugees.
“I think that experience is going to allow service providers to be better prepared for the type of trauma people might be experiencing, and I think what’s really important is to know the signs aren’t always seen within the first few days,” she says. “It might take years for that systemic trauma to come to fruition.”
Another lesson learned is that some of the Afghan refugees will leave the province, as did some Syrian ones.
“That’s OK,” Balser says. “The work of providing a safe home for that period of time is so important… knowing that the families are safe is really the end goal.”
Jennifer Watts, CEO of ISANS, says Nova Scotians have shown “tremendous interest,” responsibility, and compassion in welcoming refugees into communities. She says it will be important for organizations and people to look at the Afghan refugees as individuals with unique needs and goals, to talior how they’re individually helped.
Alexander Cohen, the press secretary for the federal minister of immigration, refugees, and citizenship, says the Afghan resettlement effort is “considerably more challenging” than the Syrian one.
“There is no existing infrastructure to support our work. Our referral partners, like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, are still getting established. The situation remains very dangerous and the place where most refugees are located is controlled by a recognized terrorist group under Canadian law, with no access for our officials,” he says in an emailed statement. “This means that getting the program established is taking longer than in the past.”
As well, when Canada started airlifting refugees from Kabul, it didn’t have an existing military presence in the country, thereby complicating matters. Cohen says Canada is now working closely with allies, neighbouring countries, veterans groups, NGOs, and other countries to find new routes for refugees so they can escape safely to Canada.
Watts says the COVID-19 pandemic and border closures are also key differentiating factors.
“Not only do we have the response to the Afghanistan situation, but we are also seeing a stronger, more intensive arrival of refugees from the countries we would be regularly seeing refugees from,” she says.
