THAT’S SO KIND!

AS the world marked the plight of refugees the people of Bahrain rallied round to provide clothing and school equipment for Syrian refugees in support of the GulfWeekly & DHL Express Ramadan Appeal 2015.

Big-hearted pupils at St Christopher’s School have been busy filling small boxes full of useful items to help children trying to continue their education in makeshift classrooms.

Clothes and shoes for men, women and children are being handed into the Bahrain Rugby Football Club to help families struggling to survive. DHL Express will deliver the donated items to camps where the desperate, displaced people of Syria have gathered to escape the conflict in their homeland.

First marked in 2001, The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) World Refugee Day is held every year on June 20.

António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said: “Fifteen years into a millennium that many of us hoped would see an end to war, a spreading global violence has come to threaten the very foundations of our international system.

“More people fled last year than at any other time in our records. Around the world, almost 60 million have been displaced by conflict and persecution. Nearly 20 million of them are refugees, and more than half are children.

“Their numbers are growing and accelerating, every single day, on every continent. In 2014, an average of 42,500 people became refugees, asylum-seekers or internally displaced persons, every single day – that is four times more than just four years ago. These people rely on us for their survival and hope.

“They will remember what we do.”

The St Chris Kindness Club, set up by teacher Alyaa Bataineh, pictured top right, met in Saar, and members, aged between five and 11, filled boxes full of pens, pencils, erasers, marbles, notepads and small drawing and colouring books for the Syrian refugee children with handwritten notes of love and support.

“I started the club in September and it runs every Sunday,” she explained. “We started off with eight kids and it’s grown to 48 now.”

Ms Bataineh added: “The idea behind it was to show children that community service could be done on a daily basis. We have baked cookies for the cleaners, raised BD3,000 to help the survivors of the recent Nepal earthquakes, helped people with their shopping outside Alosra Supermarket, picked up rubbish outside school, and even posted positive notes around the school to brighten up the day.

“On World Kindness Day we gave everyone coming into school a hug, stickers, cookies – anything to put a smile on their faces. The club members also made some lovely things on Mother’s Day and handed them out to mums waiting at the gates.”

It is hoped that their efforts will inspire other children on the island to support the appeal before they leave the island for their summer vacations.

Readers are also being urged to fill boxes with clothes placed at the rugby club in Janabiya. Posters highlighting the appeal have this week been placed at the entrance urging members to be generous and open their hearts.

Club administration officer Amani S Sharaf picked up a pile of clothes and shoes on Saturday afternoon left at reception donated by a well-wisher to mark World Refugee Day and said: “Every little helps when you are homeless, desperate and fleeing to safety. I’m sure our members will open their hearts at this time.”

The practice of granting asylum to people fleeing persecution in foreign lands is one of the earliest hallmarks of civilisation. References to it have been found in texts written 3,500 years ago, during the blossoming of the great early empires in the Middle East such as the Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians and ancient Egyptians.

Over three millennia later, protecting refugees was made the core mandate of UNHCR, which was set up to look after refugees, specifically those waiting to return home at the end of the Second World War.

The 1951 Refugee Convention spells out that a refugee is someone who ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country’.

UNHCR staff members operate in some 125 countries around the world, from major capitals to remote, difficult locations where field staff are directly helping the most vulnerable victims of displacement.

Its biggest current operations include Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. Former Portuguese prime minister, Mr Guterres was elected by the UN General Assembly to become the 10th United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in June 2005.

It is one of the world’s foremost humanitarian organisations. UNHCR has twice won the Nobel Peace Prize. “History has shown that doing the right thing for victims of war and persecution engenders goodwill and prosperity for generations. And it fosters stability in the long run,” he added. “The world needs to renew its commitment now to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its principles that made us strong – to offer safe harbour, both in our own countries and in the epicentres of the crises, and to help refugees restore their lives. We must not fail.”