Event Host/Institute: Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration (CARFMS/ACERMF) in collaboration with the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University
Event date and time (to and from): 29-31 May 2023
Event location/venue: York University, Keele Campus, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Event type: Conference
Link: https://pheedloop.com/carfms23/site/home/

Description from host:

One of the realities and tragedies of all societies, whether subtle or pronounced, blatantly conscious or unconscious, is the blight of racism that is layered and embedded in systemic ways and manifested through the inequalities, segregation, and divisions across people’s life experiences within those societies, whether it is in levels of formal education, occupational and income categories, residential accommodations, lifestyles, and even, life spans. Racial disparities are not only evident within societies but across societies where the quality of life for those in the Global South is starkly different from that of those in the Global North.

These sharp societal racial inequalities are magnified when overlaid with, ever seemingly, the widening divisions globally, between those who live in relative peace, security, and economic prosperity and those who live in relative armed conflict, precarity, and economic disparity, where one of their most fundamental human rights, the right to live in peace, is being violated.

Now is the time to seek creative solutions to today’s racial and other inequities and injustices experienced by refugees and other forced migrants, in an effort to help realize everyone’s most fundamental human rights with dignity, and, in the process, to reach and ensure that we fulfill our State’s obligations to protect the fundamental rights of all those who are seeking asylum. We all have a “responsibility to protect” those who are fleeing persecution and are seeking protection.