Eighteen months ago today, 140 people gathered in Cardiff to discuss what Wales would look like to be a Nation of Sanctuary. The report from that conference, published on Refugee Day 2017, is below:

Summary report Nation of Sanctuary

Since then, a large number of committed individuals have been working across the country to make the vision of Wales as a Nation of Sanctuary a reality.

Clymblaid Ffoaduriaid

The Welsh Refugee Coalition has endorsed the vision of Wales as a Nation of Sanctuary as one of its main aims. The full Coalition has a sub-group focused on this work, which also incorporates enthusiastic people from beyond the third sector, including people working in the NHS, universities and independent volunteers.

Making the Vision a Reality

We recognise this is an ambitious piece of work and it won’t all come together overnight. To guide our work, we wrote a short Strategic Statement. You can read this below:

Nation of Sanctuary Strategic Statement

We also spent time identifying the streams of work that we will focus on to begin with, incorporating the key themes of the 2017 conference, building on existing support and addressing important issues as reported by people seeking sanctuary. These are:

• Education
• Health
• Volunteering & Employment
• Local Communities

Welsh Government’s Nation of Sanctuary Plan

Through engaging with the Welsh Government, we facilitated consultation with over 100 people seeking sanctuary prior to their drafting of their new ‘Refugee & Asylum Seeker Delivery Plan’. The formal consultation period ended in June 2018 and their ‘Nation of Sanctuary Refugee & Asylum Seeker Delivery Plan’ is due to be published by the end of the year.

What Next?

Small teams of volunteers are working on the four priority streams and updates on their progress will be published over the next few months. If you want to get involved, please visit our page with more information about how to do so.