Restoring Dignity: Why Refugee Protection is a Sacred Responsibility

My name is Allegra Urujeni, and I’m in my last semester at Trinity Western University, where I major in political science. I’m currently interning at Citizens for Public Justice through the Laurentian Leadership Centre Program. From a young age, I’ve been passionate about helping others, and I aspire to become a protection officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and focus on legal protection and advocacy for refugee and migrant rights. For this blog, I was asked to reflect on my experience of helping organize CPJ’s first Ride for Refuge event, my parents’ story as refugees, and Canada’s relationship with and policy decisions on refugees and immigrants. What I have discovered is that it is crucial to make a good refugee and migrant policy at home in Canada, because these people already experience severe injustice abroad.

This year, I had the privilege of helping organize the very first CPJ Ride for Refuge. As a child of parents who were once refugees, it was beautiful and touching to see everyone gather together for a good cause and see young and old people taking their time to ride or walk for refugee and migrant rights. My own family’s migration experience taught me that, no matter what causes people to migrate, people are more vulnerable to the world’s existing injustices, inequities, and oppression when they do. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that we get it right within our own borders, where we have the ability to make policy choices that honor our international human rights obligations.

Riding and walking for refuge

Ride for Refuge is a Canada-wide initiative where charities and their supporters come together at group rides and walks to fundraise and work to make our country welcoming and just for refugees and migrants. While CPJ staff organized a flagship ride and walk in Nepean, ON, CPJ supporters took up the call at locations across Canada and held their own community rides and walks. The Ride for Refuge event in Nepean was highly successful: beautiful weather gave participants an ideal environment to walk or cycle to advocate for refugee and migrant rights. The event drew a strong turnout, with numerous volunteers demonstrating solidarity through their participation.

Before the walk and ride, CPJ staff Anna and Scott provided an overview of CPJ’s advocacy work and the broader goals of the Ride for Refuge initiative. Scott also highlighted the Postcards from the Public campaign, an effort through which CPJ mobilizes Canadians—individuals, faith communities, and local groups—to communicate their concerns on protecting refugee and migrant rights directly to Prime Minister Carney.

After the speeches and the ride, the group was welcomed with a meal of lasagna and salad, fostering a sense of community and appreciation. Organizing this event was meaningful for me because my own parents were refugees who fled Rwanda and migrated to Burundi.

Injustice for refugees abroad

My parents’ experience of living in exile is a painful yet common experience for many refugees, particularly in the Great Lakes region, where there is a large Rwandan diaspora. They experienced the oppression and prejudice that accompany refugees everywhere, whether within Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, or in Canada. 

When my parents fled Rwanda in December 1973, my father was just three years old, and my mother was three months old. At that age, children don’t understand politics, ethnicity, or conflicts—their world is limited to home, family, and basic needs. But their lives changed overnight: they left everything behind, including their homeland and identity. They lost contact with their extended family and their community. At a young age, these concepts are meaningless, but their absence has left an emptiness that continues in their adult life. Before the exile, my father’s father experienced extreme harassment, both professionally and socially: he received a letter terminating his employment in the entire Rwandan territory, his cattle were banned from grazing on all Rwandan farms and hills, and all of his children were prohibited from attending school in the entire Rwandan territory.

My grandfather first arranged for my father and some of his siblings to escape to Burundi to continue their education. Then, his cattle were also sent with relatives to Burundi. One evening, my grandfather, a medical assistant, learned from an Italian nun working with him that his family was in danger of being killed. She advised him to flee to Burundi and provided her driver, Ludoviko, to transport the entire family in a small pickup to the border. With the help of a guide skilled at avoiding detection, they successfully crossed into Burundi, where they finally ate after two days of starvation and were taken to a military barracks.

Once in Bujumbura, my grandfather secured a job in the southern part of the country. His cattle had a reserve farm to graze on, and his children could resume their education. In a foreign land, they reclaimed some of the rights that had been stolen from them. Despite Rwanda and Burundi being neighboring countries with similar languages and cultures, they were still seen as outsiders. My father’s childhood was marked by a lack of toys and no time for play—surviving took precedence over innocence. As my father grew up, he grappled with an identity crisis, as he had few memories of his homeland and never felt fully accepted as Burundian, fueling his desire to return home. He constantly asked my grandfather why they lived in exile and in hardship, reflecting a growing desire to reclaim his stolen identity. 

Finding work was difficult for my parents; studying was also a challenge because they faced higher academic standards than local students. My father was often teased and bullied for being a refugee and speaking with a different accent, but he excelled academically and attended College Saint Albert, a school reserved for refugees at the time. His childhood story is one of immense strength—a narrative of interrupted innocence, shaped by borders and living conditions that influenced his future. He often quotes, “It is through the wound that light enters you.” 

Canada’s reputation and responsibilities

Canada has a generally positive reputation for accepting migrants fleeing war, genocide, human trafficking, and injustice. Despite my parents’ difficult experience when they migrated to Burundi, I believe it’s important to learn from that and encourage other countries to be more welcoming, because it’s our duty to ensure freedom and safety, as much as we would want for ourselves. Canada is legally and morally bound, under international treaties and national law, to protect those fleeing genocide, war, and discrimination. These obligations stem from agreements like the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which requires Canada to protect individuals with a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on gender, race, religion, political beliefs, or social group. Canada also belongs to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, established in 1948, which urges nations to act against and punish perpetrators of genocide and to protect victims. Additionally, Canada’s support for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, adopted by the UN in 2005, enforces a collective obligation to assist victims of war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA, 2002) codifies Canada’s international commitments, stating its goal to help refugees and facilitate their resettlement. Canada’s programs—such as the Government-Assisted Refugees (GAR) and Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR)—assist displaced individuals in integrating into Canadian society. 

However, despite Canada’s longstanding reputation for helping refugees, the introduction of Bills C-2 and C-12 contradicts our international and national commitments. The government says that these bills are meant to enhance border security by altering immigration and asylum policies and “improve how we receive, process, and decide on asylum claims to make the system faster and easier to navigate”—but that is misleading. In reality, these bills include provisions that would restrict the right of some in need of protection to make any claim for asylum at all, and would severely limit due process for others by creating new time-bars for refugee claims. Additionally, the bill grants unrestricted authority to Canadian officials to withdraw existing visas, permits, and other immigration statuses if they deem it in the public interest.

The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) also fails to reliably respect the rights of an individual to seek asylum. Under this agreement with the U.S., Canada sends individuals back to the U.S. who entered Canada hoping to make a refugee claim. In a recent cross-border campaign to call on the Canadian government to reverse its course on these immigration policies, CPJ’s Executive Director Willard Metzger said that they represent a “continental demise” of refugee and migrant rights, and that they are incompatible with Canada’s international human rights obligations.

This undermines Canada’s reputation for protecting human rights and restricts individuals fleeing danger. As the saying goes, “there is no place like home,” but people leave their homes only because of war, famine, poverty, or insecurity—never lightly. Refugees seek safety and hope for a better life, and Canada’s policies are obstructing this pursuit.

My family’s story, the Ride for Refuge, and Canada’s long tradition of welcoming those fleeing danger all point to a simple truth: our policies must reflect our values. Refugees do not choose displacement; circumstances force it upon them. As a country with both the capacity and the moral obligation to offer protection, Canada must uphold its commitments and resist measures like Bills C-2 and C-12 and the STCA that undermine them. My parents’ journey continues to remind me why this work matters. Ensuring safety, dignity, and justice for refugees is not just policy—it is a responsibility that defines who we are and who we aspire to be.