We, like most of our team, are Syrian refugees, and we found ourselves nodding in agreement as Joyeux Mugisho’s article about the impact of international aid on refugee self-reliance was recently passed around by our organisation’s staff in İstanbul and Gaziantep, Türkiye.
Mugisho shed light on how UN agencies and international organisations often treat refugees as burdens rather than as agents in our own lives. It was striking how similarly disempowering the refugee experience can be across countries and continents.
In our own experiences as refugees coming to Türkiye from Syria over 10 years ago, we saw an absence of programmes and services focused on providing long-term, sustainable support. Instead, many of us relied on friends and local community members to help us settle in our new home. And, like Mugisho, we experienced and witnessed treatment by INGOs that left some of us feeling like just a number, with our needs and struggles reduced to nameless statistics for donors.
We agree with the author that this approach is often driven by the misguided belief that refugees are burdens who can't care for themselves. This dangerous assumption can lead to vulnerable families being denied assistance that could help them not only get back on their feet but also become contributing members of their host communities.
But not all INGOs are the same in their approach to working with refugees. Building Markets, the organisation we work for, for example, focuses on the value that refugees bring to their communities. We help launch and support refugee-run small businesses and believe deeply that each person has knowledge, skills, and talents that can be harnessed to create positive change in their lives.
By providing refugees with the necessary information, connections, and resources to pursue their business goals and aspirations, we are able to focus on the strengths and creativity that they bring, rather than create the dependency that often characterises conventional aid models. By recognizing these strengths, we promote development that is built on dignity and resilience.
Being a refugee is beyond our control. Refugees encounter many challenges, including prejudice and economic difficulties. Despite these formidable obstacles, we continue to demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity. The label refugee doesn’t fully represent all that we are or communicate that refugees are active agents of change in their own lives. We see entrepreneurs in our network as proactive people who want to be successful, grow their companies, and contribute to their new communities – they just happen to be refugees too.
When the earthquakes struck Türkiye and Syria in February, we felt the impact of the devastation personally and through the network of businesses we support. Over 1,400 of the 2,500 businesses active in our Türkiye network are located in the earthquake-affected area. We quickly reached out to many of them to check how they were doing and see how we could work together to help people who were so badly affected.
It took just three days for refugee-owned restaurants in our network to set up mobile kitchens in the southernmost province of Hatay, where 23,000 died, over 30,000 people were injured, and over 270,000 buildings were ruined. For survivors who lost everything, those days mattered. The restaurant owners in our network drew on the skills and knowledge they use daily – from accessing necessary supplies to catering to people en masse – to respond to the need in their community. Their businesses became an essential humanitarian service.
“Being a refugee is beyond our control. Refugees encounter many challenges, including prejudice and economic difficulties. Despite these formidable obstacles, we continue to demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity.”
As Türkiye moves from relief to reconstruction, we know that the businesses in our network – in sectors ranging from construction and medical to food supply – will be an essential part of that recovery process. In the first months after the earthquake, more than 20 businesses in our network have already bid on contracts totaling $4 million to provide support in the form of construction services, blankets, and other items needed in the field to support aid efforts.
As we consider Mugisho’s very relevant piece on the importance of refugee-led organisations, it is crucial for the international community to remember and engage with local private sector actors as well. These businesses are not only affected by crises but are also a critical part of sustainable development efforts.
By flipping the narrative and embracing the entrepreneurial spirit and resilience of refugees, we can forge a more inclusive and empowering path forward, where refugees are not only recipients of aid but also active contributors to their host communities and agents in their own lives.
The authors are all members of Building Markets’ core team in Türkiye. Aladdin Aksoy serves as a Growth and Training Coordinator in Istanbul, Saeed Eido is a Verification and Regional Officer in Gaziantep, and Nawar Maarri is the Deputy Country Director in Istanbul.
