1.4 Leave the country now!

Goal: To allow students to experience the practical difficulties a refugee faces when trying to escape. It is also intended to make them aware of the decisions one must take in order to leave safely.

Interactive exercise

Split the class into four groups.
Assign each group a category, such as relatives, close friends, neighbours and acquaintances.
Assign some members of each group different characteristics, such as disability, chronic illness, old age, a very young age, etc.
Give each group the same scenario: they must flee but three people in each group (or equivalent number depending on the size of groups) must be left behind.
Place each group in different corners of the room.

Can everybody in the group flee together? Should they risk the whole group’s safety? Each group must agree on which members will be left behind so as not to put the entire group in jeopardy. Those picked out must stand in the middle of the room and each in turn present reasons why they should be allowed to stay in the group. The group must then decide whether to accept, or reject, their pleas.

Discuss with your class how it felt to have to leave people behind, knowing that it could be fatal for them to stay in the country. Discuss how it felt to be outvoted and left behind.

Goal: To increase understanding of the difficult choices a refugee faces.

Interactive exercise

Ask your pupils to list the five things they would find hardest about arriving in a new country alone. Discuss it with the class.

Goal: To increase students’ appreciation of what it would be like to arrive alone and empty-handed in a foreign country.

Awareness exercise

Many refugees are forced to pay “agents” in order to get false passports or to be smuggled over borders.

Discuss with the class what type of behaviour should be considered right or wrong when helping a refugee escape. Here is some background material for discussion:

Set your pupils the task of researching Raoul Wallenberg, who organised a safety-auction that saved the lives of a considerable number of Hungarian Jews.
Ask your pupils read about the Norwegian ship Tampa, which changed course in order to save 438 asylum seekers in the Indian Ocean in 2001.
Set your pupils the task of researching people-smuggling and trafficking into the UK.

Suitable sources for information are, for example, human rights organisations on the internet, articles on the web facts, newspapers or literature.

Goal: To give pupils greater knowledge of how some people exhibit civil courage in order to help fellow human beings while others exploit their vulnerability.

Discussion exercise

Encourage pupils to discuss freely how they think they would feel in a refugee situation. What would be the easiest and the toughest issues to confront?