1. Mobile application to enhance refugees integration in Greece
- Author
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Campos Rodríguez, David, Varela-Pet, José, and Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Escola Técnica Superior de Enxeñaría
- Subjects
Refugees ,Inmigration ,API ,Integration ,Mobile application ,Asylum ,Investigación::33 Ciencias tecnológicas::3304 Tecnología de los ordenadores [Materias] ,Migration - Abstract
Traballo Fin de Grao en Enxeñaría Informática. Curso 2017-2018 In the past years, Europe has been facing a massive increase in the immigration affluence, caused partially (but not exclusively) by the outbreak of the war in Syria. More than three hundred sixty thousand migrants risked their life to get to Europe in 2016 and more than one thousand had drowned in the Mediterranean at July 3, 2018, according to UNHCR. One of the most common ways for people to arrive is through the eastern Mediterranean, refugees coming mostly from Syria make their way along Turkey and cross the sea to Greece. Although applying for asylum can be a lengthy procedure, many applications are been received, many more than the countries are accepting so far. In 2015, EU countries offered asylum to 292,540 refugees, in contrast with the more than a million ones who applied for it on the same year. As indicated in the presentation of the UNINTEGRA project (further explanation later), more than fifty thousand refugees and asylum appliers are blocked in Greece and live in precarious conditions. In September 2017, the European relocation program of two years ended. As UNHCR reports, only a few refugees are able to leave Greece and move to a third country. The long time living in refugee camps or in irregular places have affected negatively these refugees in social and psychological terms. Despite of the efforts of the Greek and international authorities, the projects of the NGOs and the volunteers, refugees do not have complete access to the basic social and health services yet. There is a clear need of innovative projects to help refugees to get back into an active life, looking for a social integration and inclusion and putting special attention to special necessities like LGTB people, children in risk or mothers which are alone with kids. It is because of this that the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) leads, since 2017, the project UNINTEGRA, in collaboration with the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), Universidade do Minho (Portugal), Fundació Acsar (Spain), Fundació Universitària Balmes (Spain) and Concello de Santiago de Compostela. The UNINTEGRA project is also co-funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) of the European Commission. This project has the main aim to intervene in the migration process by providing people in refugee sites and centres with the necessary resources to empower them, encouraging their participation in the host community. The duration of the project is 24 months and its period of implementation runs from 1st December 2017 to 30th November 2019, and it is divided in six work packages which affect different areas inside the general objectives. The project this document treats about corresponds to the fourth work package: the App4Refs application. This working package is led by the Fundació Acsar and counts with the collaboration of the Department of Electronics and Computer Science in the University of Santiago de Compostela, who offered it as a final project.
- Published
- 2018