THE United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador, Adel Emam, believes that the UNHCR's main role is to focus on protecting refugees and cooperating with the competent authorities. For refugee protection in the host countries, this involves the application of the principle of non-refoulement or non-expulsion, not returning a refugee or asylum seeker to his country of origin. "The refugee needs the co-operation of governments and civil society. Please help refugees, you cannot imagine their sufferings," Emam, Egypt's top comedian, told a seminar in Cairo on Monday night, adding that respecting others means respecting the rights of refugees. "In Egypt, refugees enjoy freedom of movement where they live as citizens, and not in camps. They suffer the same problems faced by working-class Egyptians," he told the gathering at the Egyptian Diplomatic Club in downtown Cairo. In January 2000, Emam was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR. Soon after, he undertook a field visit to meet with refugees and UNHCR field workers in Yemen. He was part of the UNHCR delegation to the UN Secretary-General's two conferences for all UN goodwill ambassadors from the UN System, held at the United Nations in New York in October 2000 and June 2002. The celebrated Egyptian actor has also undertaken professional journeys as an artist to Jordan, Tunisia, Iraq, Oman, Syria, Algeria, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. These trips were not organised by UNHCR, but he has seized all these opportunities to raise awareness about refugees and to brief the media on UNHCR activities, expressing his solidarity with refugees, speaking to a wide public in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region. "Egypt is hosting more than 38,000 refugees, as its traditions and customs long ago formed a solid foundation for the notion of asylum," said Mohamed Dayri, Regional Representative of the UNHCR. Unfortunately, he added, the Arab and Islamic region still hosts the largest number of refugees and displaced persons in the world, due to the severity of conflict, either inside or with its neighbouring states. “There are more than 4 million Iraqis forced to flee their homes as a result of the occupation, and the public violence and sectarian war that have defined Iraq since 2003. Syria and Jordan alone are hosting nearly 2 million Iraqis,” Dayri stressed. He told the same gathering, that included ambassadors and diplomats, as well as media people, that Iraq itself is hosting nearly 40,000 refugees from other countries: Turks, Iranians, Sudanese and Palestinians. This event, one of a series of seminars on UN goodwill ambassadors, sought to raise awareness about the activities of the regional agencies of the United Nations.
