Bristol pledges to offer refuge to ten Afghan families

Bristol is currently preparing to offer sanctuary to ten families fleeing Afghanistan as the mayor calls for more government resources to increase capacity.

Scenes that saw people desperately clinging onto a US Air Force plane as it took off from Kabul were described by Marvin Rees as heartbreaking as he spoke of the importance of supporting those trying to leave the country now the Taliban has seized control.

Britain has pledged to welcome some 20,000 people fearing persecution in Afghanistan over the next five years, with 5,000 to be resettled in the first year. At this stage, the city has set a target to take in ten households.

Admitting this is a “sober offering”, the mayor says there is a willingness in Bristol to provide homes for more people but that there need to be the resources available from Westminster to make this viable.

“We need to do more, but we need to move at a pace that the city can cope [with],” said Rees, speaking during a press briefing on Wednesday.

“One of the worst things we could do is to bring people here without the capacity to support those people with what they’ll need – connection to other members of the community, emotional, mental support – people have been through major trauma so we’re taking quite a sober approach in line with the resources we have available to at this moment in time.

“But what we will be saying to government is release more resource and we’ll be able to bring more people here.”

The mayor said work is taking place at a regional level, as well as globally through the Mayors Migration Council, to support the people seeking sanctuary from Afghanistan.

He also put a call out for private landlords to come forward to help provide homes for people in need.

Rees continued: “Our response over the last few years is where we have the capacity and the support to make sure that we can create the conditions in which people can come here and flourish, then we will up our numbers.

“But we have to have the resources in place to make sure that support is good enough to give families the opportunity to flourish. ”

The mayor revealed that on a personal level, he has a friend – from his time as a Yale World Fellow – in Afghanistan. Rees said his friend Chris, who is a teacher, has led an “incredibly giving life to young people in the country and is a very humble man”. A number of influential Yale Fellows are working to try to secure safe passage for him and his family.

Speaking about the situation in Afghanistan, Rees continued: “When you see people who seem to be in so much fear, who seem to feel so hopeless, maybe feel abandoned and alone; you can’t be anything other than broken-hearted.

“Those feelings for me extend to people who faced an earthquake in Haiti just a few days ago and now they are standing in pools of water today and feel left behind and abandoned, that extends to parents who feel that life is so desperate that their best hope is to put their child into a small inflatable dinghy and launch out into the channel in the darkness, with all the fear they must carry with them.”

He added that it only emphasises the need for people in the city and beyond to “keep hold of their compassion”.

Main photo by Lowie Trevena

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