In Focus

Cipayung. The room is not big, but there’s just enough room for Fariba to let her four children run around with dolls in their hands. However her youngest daughter, a tired and cranky 2-year-old, clings by her side. “Playing here is all they do every day,” said Fariba, who didn’t use her real name for security reasons.

The Iranian woman and her children have lived for four months at a refugee shelter operated by Church World Service and located in the hills of West Java, about an hour’s drive from Jakarta. Several thousand miles from home, Fariba said she gambled with her fate so that her children could have better lives.

Read more, please click here.

Asylum Seekers from Sri Lanka on their Boat in Banten
(JakartaGlobe/Wisnu Adi)

Note: Church World Service is a partner of UNHCR and is implementing a program titled ‘Protecting Urban Refugees through Empowerment’. The article contains several factual errors: Church World Service operates a refugee center rather than a refugee shelter and does not provide accommodation. The refugee in question and her children are living in rented accommodation and are not asylum seekers as they have already been recognized as refugees by UNHCR. Finally, our organization is Church World Service rather than Christian World Service.