The first Freedom Across Borders conference was held in London on 6 July 2019. Read more.
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Freedom Across Borders is a conference on 6 July in London being organised by Syria Solidarity UK with Amnesty International UK, the Syrian Legal Development Programme, Dawlaty, Migrants Organise and others.

Register here.

We’re going to be talking about refugee experiences in the UK, in Europe, and in the countries neighbouring Syria.

We’ll be talking about surviving trauma, and seeking justice.

We’ll be looking to connect Syrians’ experiences with others in the UK who have been forced to cross borders in their search for freedom.

Rouba Mhaissen of Sawa for Development and Aid will tell of their work with refugees in Lebanon. Reem Assil of Common Purpose will talk about their diaspora leaders programmes, including with Syrians, and Zrinka Bralo will talk about bringing her experiences as a Bosnian refugee to her work with Migrants Organise.

In our Survivor Strategies workshops, we’ll be talking to people from Freedom From Torture and Art Refuge UK about surviving trauma, and we’ll have a discussion on security challenges for activists.

We will be talking about preserving Syrian memory, about Dawlaty’s work archiving Syrian oral history and about Qisetna’s work with Syrians on telling personal stories, and about Positive Negatives’ work with survivors of several conflicts, presenting personal testimony in the form of comics.

Syrian refugees who reach the UK are survivors of perhaps the biggest crime scene this century, so we are working together with the Syrian Legal Development Programme on legal accountability issues. Women Now for Development will talk about justice and accountability from a feminist perspective. Airwars will be explaining their work on reporting casualties from international military interventions in Syria.

To join us on 6 July in London, register via Eventbrite.



Schedule for Freedom Across Borders, 6 July 2019:

Registration will begin at 9am.

Our opening discussion will be at 10am: Zrinka Bralo of Migrants Organise in conversation with Syrian activists.

From 10.45 on, we will have three streams of workshop discussions: Welcome Refugees, Survivor Strategies, and Accountability.

With breaks through the day, and a Syrian lunch, our last discussion of the afternoon ends at 5pm.

The evening starts with a film screening at 6pm of the documentary Mr Gay Syria, followed by a Q&A with Mahmoud Hassino, and then Syrian music and food until we end at 9pm.



Below: From Khalid’s Story, one of a trilogy of short comics collectively titled A Perilous Journey, illustrated by Lindsay Pollock for Positive Negatives in 2015.