Montpellier mobilized as part of its Reception and Integration Contract (CTAI)

Thrown on the roads, crushed by war, tortured, dirtied, piled up, lacerated by barbed wire, swallowed up or spat out by the Mediterranean, pushed from one border to another, the bodies of migrants bear the stigmata of the thousand sufferings of exile. But also, when they rise again, the hopes and dreams of uprooted souls.

Montpellier is strongly committed to welcoming migrants fleeing regimes at war or persecution, poverty and the effects of climate change. It deploys a policy of solidarity and strong integration towards refugees and supports on a daily basis the associations working to help people in distress, particularly on the Mediterranean Sea.

This commitment was materialized in 2021 with the signing of the Reception and Integration Contract, the CTAI, between the city of Montpellier, the prefecture of Hérault and the Interministerial Delegation for Integration, Reception and to Refugee Integration which is co-financing the territory’s actions for the 3rd year, including World Refugee Day.

For this 2024 edition, the City of Montpellier, Adages, Gammes and the SOS Solidarités Group invite all Montpellier residents, young and old, refugees or asylum seekers, professionals and volunteers who work daily to make Montpellier a land of ‘welcome.

Thursday June 20 from 12 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Halle Tropisme – Free entry.

Artistic creation at the rendezvous of this day of openness to others

This edition will give pride of place to artistic creation and dance in particular, since the body will take center stage.

“Here and Elsewhere”, acrobatic “break” performance: Ankiffoudine Sandani will talk about his journey in a kwassa kwassa – traditional fishing canoe – from the Comoros to Mayotte, and will question his own heritage.
Siaka Coulibaly and her young dancers will present a dance performancewith texts and direction by Mathias Beyler, Gabriele Paupini and Dirk Morell.
With the attack on a refugee camp as a starting point, Christian Romain Kossa will close the day’s dance performances at 7 p.m., with his show “Nahibly, an AGAIN story”.

Asylum seekers and refugees will participate in this creative impulse, notably through aecture proposed by the La Boussole theater workshop, a sound walk designed with Oaqadi radio or the work of a women’s workshop hosted by the company l’Insoumise.

They will also be in the kitchen, at lunchtime, with the Blablacooks association and, in the evening, with the Cimade cooking workshop.

4 city services mobilized

To ensure that June 20 is a major solidarity celebration, the city of Montpellier is mobilizing 4 of its services to welcome, guide and raise public awareness of the refugee cause:

The Social Cohesion service will be represented via its mobile health prevention unit Ma.P, which will intervene in oral health, health through sport and the fight against discrimination in access to care;
The Artistic Creation and Cultural Industry service, with the presence of a mediator who will explain the performances and support the public in the discovery and understanding of the works proposed;
The Montpellier Foreigners’ Council will present its functioning and its commitments;
The CCAS of the City of Montpellier will relocate its UniV’AIR digital support and integration workshops to the Halle Tropisme all afternoon.

Rich programming to deconstruct stereotypes and prejudices

A round table hosted by Jean-Philippe Turpin from Cimade will bring together Philippe Liotard, sociologist and anthropologist at the University of Lyon I, Naraina De Melo Martins Kuyumjian, co-founder of the association Entre et Avec, Anouck Etiembre, practitioner in Psycho-boxing and the NGO SOS Méditerranée.
Raising awareness among schools with the presentation of the show “I am tiger” by the Groupes Noces company at the Vista theater. The primary schools concerned are Voltaire, Marie Curie, Jules Simon as well as a 6th grade class from Croix d’Argent college. A writing workshop is conducted in three classes before the day, with two interventions by social workers from CADA Astrolabe at the end of the workshop. Students will also be received on June 20 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Halle Tropisme with a workshop to combat stereotypes and discrimination by Les Petits Débrouillards.
With the popular education association Les Petits Débrouillards, other visitors will also be able to reflect on the creation and deconstruction of stereotypes and prejudices around refugees.
SOS Ukraine will present its actions in favor of refugees from the conflict with Russia.
The Red Cross will present its mission to reconnect the family ties of exiled people.
The I welcome association will explain how it supports those who are ready to welcome a refugee into their home, for a few weeks or a few months.

In the evening, time for the party and the “participatory meal”:

Emotion for the performance of “Nahibly une histoire AGAIN” by the dancer Christian Romain Kossa, then Jocelyn Balu and Borumba will once again summon the bodies, to the sound of Congolese rumba and folk from the streets of Kinshasa, before the opening of the “Ball of the 7 continents”.

What is World Refugee Day?

The United Nations General Assembly established “World Refugee Day” in December 2000.

It was the following year, on June 20, 2001, that it was celebrated for the first time, thus commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees. This is a strong time to raise awareness, inform and mobilize the public on the need to improve the living conditions of refugees but also to show what they can bring to the society that welcomes them, through exchange, sharing cultures and meeting others.

In 2023, this event was born in Montpellier from a joint initiative of the teams of the Reception Center for Asylum Seekers (CADA) and Emergency Accommodation for Asylum Seekers (HUDA), the associations Adages, Gammes and the SOS Solidarités Group, which accommodates and supports more than 1,300 asylum seekers and refugees on a daily basis in Montpellier, Sète, Lunel and in the heart of Hérault.

This day is supported by the city of Montpellier as part of its Reception and Integration Contract (CTAI), which in addition to learning French, integration into employment or access to housing also aims to raising awareness among as many people as possible about the issue of refugee populations in Montpellier.

Halle Tropisme website