Reverend Aled Edwards OBE says he hopes 2021 scheme can be reused for Ukrainian refugees
Nine months ago after the fall of Kabul, youth organisation Urdd opened its doors to more than a hundred Afghan refugees fleeing the conflict.
The scheme, funded with Home Office resettlement money, was described as ‘ground-breaking’ by Welsh Government officials.
Welsh human rights campaigner Reverend Aled Edwards OBE, who came up with the idea of placing Afghan refugees with the Urdd last summer in a text to his, says he hopes the scheme can be rolled out for Ukrainian refugees.
“The Urdd project was probably the best in the world,” he said.
“There is a real difference between placing people in military camps and hotel. We will teach Welsh to Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, we will look after your schooling, make sure you are well treated by doctors. It’s amazing that babies were born in the Urdd because people felt better being there than in hospital.
“It represents Wales’ ambition of being a nation of sanctuary and wellbeing.”
The UK government announced today that Ukrainians with passports can apply for visas online from Tuesday. The Home Secretary, Pritti Patel, has come under significant pressure from her own backbench MPs to speed up the process of helping Ukrainian refugees.
Yesterday, during the Welsh Affairs Committee, First Minister Mark Drakeford called for the Home Office to be stripped of its responsibility for helping Ukrainian refugees and referred to its record of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for refugees.
The Tory Senedd Leader Andrew RT Davies said he was “not proud” of the scenes in Calais and urged Downing Street to go “further and faster”.
Less than a thousand visas have been processed so far and the UN estimates more than two million people have fled Ukraine since the conflict began.