Moscow Friends assist refugee children
Around 100 children enrolled on courses at a Quaker-supported centre
Friends in Moscow helped 100 refugee families last year.
Around 100 children enrolled on courses at a Quaker-supported centre for refugee women and children. This included Russian language classes for parents, as well as children, and classes in mathematics, physics, chemistry, English, and art therapy.
‘In an unexpected development, it is now necessary for the refugee children to know Russian before they are allowed to enter a state school,’ the Friends wrote in their latest newsletter. ‘A new law mandates that children entering school have to speak Russian, although schooling also remains a constitutional right. There is clearly a contradiction between the new law and the constitution, so we await further developments with interest.’
Friends House Moscow has been supporting the centre for refugee women and children since the mid-1990s. The refugees and other migrants come from a wide variety of countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Egypt and others.
While always facing challenges in Russia – including racism and language and employment difficulties – Friends House Moscow said the situation has grown worse for refugees in the capital. ‘Even before this latest development, life had already altered in many ways for the refugees since the start of the war,’ the Quakers write in the newsletter. ‘Even when registered with the city authorities, they are now careful to keep a lower profile than previously and rarely venture beyond the confines of the Centre. Whereas once they frequently visited museums and exhibitions in the city, this has now become a much rarer event.’
Friends House Moscow also runs a foreign language club, conducting over 450 language lessons since the last newsletter. This is ‘a sign of hope that all cultural contact with other European countries will not stop altogether’, they say.
However, despite high inflation and the devaluation of the rouble causing difficulties for ordinary people, ‘on the surface there is little evident sign of distress in the capital. Life continues almost as before’, says the newsletter.
