In a world of rapidly multiplying mobile connections, millions of refugees are displaced as a result of disaster or political conflict. Not only driven out of their homes, children are separated from their parents, husbands from their wives, and brothers and sisters are scattered to the far corners of the globe.
How to bring them back together? Perhaps with the help of the most connected device: the mobile phone.
Refugees United is a Danish non-profit organization that developed a web platform to help displaced people search for family members around the world using an anonymous database capable of matching profiles. Ericsson and its partners have now unveiled a Refugees United mobile app for Android smartphones.
But mobile registration is not limited to smartphones, with other tools supporting everything from the lowest- to highest-end mobiles. The goal is to register 120,000 people by the end of 2011. By early June, 41,000 refugees had already signed up.
“There are more than 43 million refugees and 5 billion people with access to mobile phones,” Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Vice President, Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, says. “We want to leverage the ubiquity of mobile connectivity and phones to reach out to this isolated population, and help to bring them back into the Networked Society. This is the start of a journey to profile how the use of technology can be a force of good.”
Events organized to mark the launch included a June 19 concert held in Nairobi, Kenya by Sudanese rapper and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal, as well as other activities in Johannesburg, South Africa, Copenhagen, Denmark and Stockholm, Sweden. Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom and multinational South-Africa-based operator MTN both committed to helping take the Refugees United service to their broader subscriber bases in Africa, while the mobile operator 3 will serve as a partner in Denmark and Sweden.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also used the day to highlight its “Do 1 Thing” campaign, a six-month worldwide effort aimed at promoting the stories of individual refugees, with everything from a public service spot by actress and UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie to photo exhibitions illustrating refugees’ lives. The campaign urges people to get involved and do just one thing to help refugees, from donating money to “liking” UNHCR on Facebook.
“More than 43 million people have fled a war or conflict,” Henne Mathisen, a UNHCR spokesperson, says. “That big a number does not make an impact on people. It is almost too impressive. We want to focus on the one.”
World Refugee Day was marked around the globe in hundreds of gatherings of all sizes. Iconic landmarks like New York’s Empire State Building in the US, the Tokyo Tower in Japans’ capital city and the Ericsson Globe arena in Stockholm were all bathed in blue light at night in solidarity with the tens of millions of refugees.
Also in Stockholm, UNHCR erected a white 16sq m refugee tent meant for a family of five in the middle of Stockholm’s central train station. The inside of the tent was dark and quiet, filled with blankets, water jugs, pots and pans, all symbols of involuntary flight in the midst of bustling, voluntary Stockholm travelers. Passers-by could sample the high-protein food that sustains malnourished children in refugee camps and leave notes saying what they personally would take with them if they were forced to flee. These included:
“Mobile phone and cat”
“Water”
“Friends”
“Memory”
Danish film star and Refugees United goodwill ambassador Mads Mikkelsen visited the tent along with his friend David Mikkelsen, one of two brothers who founded Refugees United after trying to help an Afghan refugee find his family after years of separation.
“This is not something we could dream of having the chance to do 20 years ago,” Mads Mikkelsen says “It opens a new door. All of a sudden, people have a tool that allows them to find their loved ones.”
Ericsson employees were also on hand in Rinkeby, a Stockholm suburb with a large refugee community, mainly from East Africa, in order to promote and help with the registration process.
The Ericsson van pulled up near Rinkeby Torg, the bustling heart of the neighborhood filled with fruit and vegetable stands, children playing and men laughing in the rain.
Charlotta Mantell, a Creative Director at Ericsson in Stockholm, who spent the afternoon in Rinkeby doing outreach work, said that local residents were intrigued by both the mobile app and the Refugees United database. Several people registered on the database, and Mantell and her Ericsson co-worker Sandra Galan, a business builder in experience marketing, helped one man use the database to try to find family members.
He did not find anyone. But Mantell said they urged him to keep checking.
“Our message was to sign up, and maybe your family or friends will be able to find you. They may not be in the database today, but they might be tomorrow.”
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