S'poreans go beyond to help refugees

It was the sight of a girl too young to be pregnant in a Rohingya refugee camp that convinced Mr Jonathan How, 49, that refugees needed more than just material aid.

Though he had already been working with refugees for years, Mr How said seeing the girl touched him deeply, calling it a "moment of empathy".

"I will never forget the nightmare and pain she and other victims endured in the places they call home," he told The Straits Times earlier this month.

Mr How, who was leading a Relief Singapore (RSG) team, and other volunteers were interviewing ethnic Rohingya victims of sexual violence in a camp in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh in 2018.

RSG is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that provides humanitarian assistance and disaster relief for communities affected by conflict, calamities and climate change.

In Singapore, there is growing awareness of the plight of the Rohingya, an ethnic minority in Myanmar who are facing persecution in the country.

This year's United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report on the global refugee situation said Myanmar is now the fifth-largest source country of displaced people in the world, after Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan and South Sudan.

About 90 per cent of the 1.1 million stateless Rohingya live in Bangladesh and Malaysia, the report said.

It is important to build empathy for the plight of refugees, as anybody could become one at any time, Ms Bernadette Iyodu, programme coordinator for NGO Rights in Exile, told ST. "There are more challenges facing refugees now than 10 years ago, especially in the face of growing displacement from climate change," said Ms Iyodu, whose NGO works to help refugees get legal aid.

Despite the dangers, a number of Singaporeans have been drawn to refugee work.

Social worker Wong Yuxiang, 31, was working with the Yazidis in northern Iraq for about a year before her time there was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic.

She was working on a project which started in 2019 to help some Yazidis support one another's mental health.

The Yazidis are an ethnic minority who have been targeted by the terror group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) since 2014.

Ms Wong's passion for helping refugees started when she was an undergraduate in the United States, where she did volunteer work, helping some refugees to settle there by teaching them English and other skills.

She said one of the challenges she faced going into northern Iraq was making sure that she was not getting in the way of helping them.

"It was important to try and understand their needs and culture, to get to know the people and listen to what they were going through, so that we could support their own solutions to their problems rather than imposing," she said.

Besides halting the flow of aid workers, the Covid-19 pandemic has also brought its own set of challenges to refugee camps.

On May 14 last year, the first case of Covid-19 was reported in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, said Mr How.

Mr How and RSG responded by partnering with international organisations to send masks to the estimated 355,000 Rohingya children, youth and the elderly who did not have access to them. Everyone eventually received two masks each.

Although trained as an accountant, Mr How has been working with refugees for more than 10 years and is RSG's chief executive.

He said empathy and faith are what drive him. "I always think about the story of the good Samaritan, where several people pass by a man who was left for dead until one man decides to help. If we don't help, who will?"

Mr Faizal Othman, chief executive of the Rahmatan Lil Alamin Foundation, said donating to causes can help people develop compassion and keep them grounded. The charity raised more than $4.2 million in just nine days this month in aid of Palestinian refugees. "We (Singapore) are very small, but I think we have a very big heart," he said.

"In the last campaign, people from all walks of life came out to donate, we were very appreciative of the kindness they showed," he added, referring to the effort for the Palestinian refugees.

June 20 is World Refugee Day, as designated by the United Nations, and some countries, including Britain, mark the week that follows as Refugee Week.