21/08/2025
Getting Out Is Just the First Step: What Refugees Must Go Through To Reach Safety And Then Face In Exile
September 2, 2025 at 1:00 pm ET
Register HERE - https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SB2OJXcnSZ2hJ0Wh0ZI7YA
Each year dozens, if not hundreds, of journalists are forced to flee their home countries because of threats to them and their families.
Just getting refugee status can be a demeaning and exhausting process. Once status is granted, the refugee and family face another issue: How to survive in their new country. Many countries limit the types of work allowed to people with refugee status. Too many journalists and other professionals are relegated to work that does not allow them to prosper or from the host country to benefit from their skills and talents.
Join us Tuesday, September 2 at 13:00 ET for an in-depth discussion that looks at what leads people to flee their home country and what issues they face once they are safely out. The panelists will also discuss what the local journalism communities can do to help these people.
Panel
Taha Siddiqui is a Pakistani investigative journalist who has been living in exile in France since 2018. In Pakistan, he reported for leading international media such as the New York Times, the Guardian and France24. He had to flee his homeland after surviving a kidnapping and assassination attempt. Pakistani army officials threatened him, hoping to censor his reporting on military abuse in the country. In 2019, he was informed by French and American authorities that his name was on a Pakistani state-sanctioned kill list.
In Paris he founded the DISSIDENT club, a bar where dissidents of the world meet. He recently published his first book - an autobiography as a graphic novel called Dissident Club, named after his bar which documents his journey from growing up in an Islamist family to becoming an atheist and his fight for freedom of expression and religion.
Kami Rice has been working as a freelance writer and editor for years.
She is also the co-founder of Allied Shepherd, which works to help endangered Afghans seeking safety in other countries.
Based in Europe, she travels the world widely, with a particular interest in how policies and geopolitical maneuvering affect regular people. Anthrow Circus is a mixed media collection crafted by artists and journalists working as creative anthropologists to examine culture and society.
Moderator
Jessica Jerreat is an award-winning journalist with nearly 25 years’ experience in local and international news and press freedom for organizations including the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and The Times of London. She joined the Voice of America March 2020 and currently holds the enviable title of Press Freedom Editor.
Jerreat is a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its policy of closing the US Agency for Global Media, the parent agency for VOA.
Each year dozens, if not hundreds, of journalists are forced to flee their home countries because of threats to them and their families. Just getting refugee status can be a demeaning and exhausting process. Once status is granted, the refugee and family face another issue: How to survive in their n...
