Accountability In Action
Annual Conference 2023
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Saturday 25th March, 11am - 5:30pm
Held in-person in Camden, London
Thank you for your interest in attending this event! Especially in light of recent harmful anti-refugee rhetoric, we'll be focusing on ways to come together to support refugee rights and freedom in a real-world, accountable way.
The full schedule for the day can be found below. Tickets are available with a donation of your choice by following the ticket link, or are available free of charge by sending an email to louisa@solidaritee.org.uk with your full name, and any dietary requirements, to register a place. Lunch and refreshments will be provided for all attendees.
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About the Theme
This year, the theme of SolidariTee’s conference is ‘Accountability in Action’. Our focus is on looking at the ways in which we can use shared learning, and knowledge gained by and with people who have lived experience of forcible displacement, to better uphold and advocate for the rights and freedoms of refugees, asylum seekers, and others forced to flee their homes.
This builds on the principle of ‘accountability to the affected population’ within humanitarian response - the principle that any form of support should be led by the values, wishes and insights of those most impacted by the situation and response.
Given that, both historically and sadly in today’s world, accountability to the affected population is often neglected with disastrous consequences, we’re using this conference as a way to focus on and showcase the ways in which a diverse array of people coming together in support of refugee rights can embody this principle in the real world.
Speakers Include
Amos Schonfeld, JCORE Deputy Director and Founder, Our Second Home
Annette Riziki, Refugee Led Research Hub, University of Oxford
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Dr Tugba Basaran, Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement at the University of Cambridge
Imogen Wall, Humanitarian & Disaster Response Expert, Qualified Therapist and Mental Health Expert
Jayne Grimes, Counselling Psychologist and CBT Therapist
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Mahad Ysuf Mohamed, Online Sale Representative at Breadwinners
Martin Cosarinsky Campos, Director of Breadwinners
Nasrin Parvaz, Activist, Author, Artist, and member of Freedom From Torture Survivors Speak OUT network
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Noah Hatchwell, Strategy & Impact Manager, Collective Aid, and Border Violence Monitoring Network member
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Rabia Nasimi,Human rights activist and co-author, Community work with migrant and refugee women: 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in research and practice
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Sheekeba Nasimi, Legal and Development Coordinator at the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association
Our Speakers
Nasrin Parvaz
Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, tortured and spent eight years in prison.
Her books include ‘One Woman's Struggle in Iran, A Prison Memoir’, and ‘The Secret Letters from X to A’, (Victorina Press 2018). Among other writings, Nasrin published a novel in Farsi about the massacre of prisoners in 1988 in Iran, to which she was an eye-witness.
She has given talks on the violation of human rights in Iran, both in Farsi and in English, in a number of countries. Her paintings were accepted for inclusion in the exhibitions, Calendar and for postcards. She studied for a degree in Psychology and subsequently gained an MA in International Relations. She then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Systemic Theory at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where she worked in a team of family therapists for some time.
http://nasrinparvaz.org/
Imogen Wall
Imogen is a qualified therapist and licensed Mental Health First Aid instructor with MHFA England, specialising in stress management and psychological welfare. She also has extensive experience in suicide response with organisations including the Samaritans and the Maytree Centre. This is her second career, and her work builds on and draws from her previous 20+ years experience as an international disaster response specialist working on the frontline of crises including the Haiti earthquake and Asian Tsunami. She focusses on providing accessible, practical and research-supported strategies for psychological wellbeing to individuals and organisation, online and in person. Her approach is straightforward and open: her passion is teaching tools and techniques that really work and that can be applied immediately to daily lives without further professional support. Everything she works with is data and research supported, and built on the core principle that better mental health is possible for all of us, and that learning how to thrive psychologically benefits all aspects of our lives
Rabia Nasimi
Rabia and her family fled from the Taliban in 1999. They claimed asylum in the UK after crossing the Channel in a refrigerated lorry. Rabia is now 29 and plays a key role in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry as Head of Research. Her last role was at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities where she led a unit within the Afghan Resettlement Team. Rabia graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2021 with an MPhil in Sociology and from the LSE in 2016 with an MSc in Sociology.
Dr Tugba Basaran
Dr Tugba Basaran serves as the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement. Her expertise is international relations - in research and in practice.
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Dr Basaran held visiting positions at Harvard Law, Princeton, Sciences-Po and the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton). She also held tenure at the University of Kent. Her expertise of international studies was moulded not only through research, but equally through residency and work in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.
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Her research is located at the intersection of politics, law and society, examining global practices of governance. Her research is, amongst others, on legal borders and geographies, claims to extra-territoriality and the production of indifference, law’s distinctions between liberal and illiberal and tensions between state and empire. She is author of the monograph ‘Security, Law and Borders: At the Limit of Liberties’. In her research, she seeks to extrapolate past and present formations of governance, prompting queries on law’s subjectivities, space and time, in an effort to reimagine politics, the way we govern and are governed, and to question established political, legal and social theories.
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Amos Schonfield
Amos Schonfield is a community builder and activist from London. He has worked to support and mould ecosystems of leaders and communities from marginalised backgrounds with the skills and connections to create a society rooted in social justice and dignity. He founded and is CEO of Our Second Home, the UK's refugee youth movement. He also is the Deputy Director of HIAS+JCORE, the Jewish voice on race and refugees. Previously, he has worked for Mavar, Student Action for Refugees, Noam Masorti Youth, and Yachad (where he remains a trustee). Amos studied International Relations at the University of Leeds and has an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford.
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Martin Cosarinsky Campos
Martin is a dedicated leader in the social enterprise and charity sector, currently serving as Director of Breadwinners - a not-for-profit organization that sells organic artisan bread and supports refugees in their transition to the UK. He also holds board positions at Social Innovation Exchange, a global network for social innovators, and is the chairman of Argentina FC, a football club in London. Previously he hold a trustee position at Praxis, an organization providing support to migrants and refugees. Martin brings a wealth of experience from his time in corporate settings, particularly as a continuous improvement expert at companies like GSK and Lindt&Spruengli. The positive experience he had volunteering for the grassroots charity RefugeeYouth help him change his career and dedicate himself to supporting young refugees. He has previously led WASH implementation efforts in rural Nicaragua. Based in London, Martin is a Fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs and On Purpose leadership programme.
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Noah Hatchwell
Noah Hatchwell is the Strategy and Impact Manager at Collective Aid. Collective Aid provides essential services including clothes, shelter and WASH to people on the move across Calais, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Northern Serbia. Since joining in 2020 as a volunteer, Noah now manages data tracking, joint strategic planning and risk management across the organisation. Noah has a research background in data integrity in the humanitarian space, and he is currently working with the Border Violence Monitoring Network in an initiative to report on the uses of AI and machine learning across European borders.
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Annette Riziki
Annette Riziki is an Academic Facilitator for the Pathways course at the Refugee-Led Research Hub (RLRH). At RLRH she leads the design and delivery of the academic curriculum for the RSC Pathways course and contributes to the evaluation and expansion of the course. She is a PhD student in the Education department at the University of Oxford. Her current DPhil research focuses on the wellbeing and educational trajectories of children in emergency contexts, through the lens of teachers.Prior to commencing her DPhil research, Riziki completed an MSc in Child Development at the University of Oxford, looking at the role of teacher behavioural and cognitive judgments on the learning trajectories of Black primary school students in England. And for her Undergraduate at the University of Manitoba (Psychology major, Sociology minor), she looked at the academic motivation of immigrant youth in Germany. Her research interests are education access and wellbeing of children in resettlement and asylum contexts. In line with this, her research in the past has focused on integration and resettlement processes of refugees and immigrants within Canada.
Jayne Grimes
Jayne Grimes is a Counselling Psychologist and CBT Therapist who has worked in clinical practice in the NHS and privately for many years. She believes in the value that taking psychology out of the clinic room can bring to the many dimensions of human experience. She has previously developed and run mental health services supporting asylum seekers as they made often risky journeys from their countries of origin into Europe and the UK. Jayne has worked with people from various cultural backgrounds, and through close collaboration with cultural mediators she has learned much about the work of staying emotionally well across different people. More recently she has run services to support mental health in the workplace, including in our increasingly pressurised public health service where she currently works in a specialist staff support role. Through her own experience and being part of dedicated teams in the caring and voluntary services, she understands the significant impact that this kind of work can have on a person on many levels, and the necessity to take stock and take care of oneself and others in equal measure.
Mahad Ysuf Mohamed
Mahad Ysuf Mohamed is a Breadwinner who wants to pursue a career in politics. He is currently studying online through Future Learning and has progressed from Market Stall Assistant, to Market Manager, and then to Online Sale Representative. Mahad has overcome many obstacles to pursue his goals. As a breadwinner, he has taken on the responsibility of supporting peers. Mahad's personal experiences with mental health challenges have inspired him to come today to Solidartee Conference.
Sheekeba Nasimi
Sheekeba Nasimi is the Legal and Development Coordinator at the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association. She supports the integration of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the UK and ensures legal represenation and advice is accessibe to all. Sheekeba received a Rising Star award by WeAreTheCity in 2022