The status of refugees and people seeking asylum is not favourable all over the world. Until they acquire a stable identity and a source of income for their survival, their lives will stay miserable. Given this reality, a British human rights advocate is taking highly unconventional measures to raise money for refugees and asylum seekers in her country.
According to The Metro, to aid refugees and asylum seekers, 27-year-old Freya Morgan will run 2,500 kilometres before the end of June while dressed up like a large, shiny disco ball.
She began doing this after learning that one-third of those housed in immigration detention facilities are on suicide watch.
The new outlet reported that her aim is to end immigration detention in the UK through the provision of legal advice, information, and representation alongside research, policy advocacy, and strategic litigation.
She told The Metro, "I guess everyone just loves disco; I love a dance, and I love a disco; I think it's the most freeing thing in the world; it's a happy place."
"I knew that I was happy to be cheesy, and I don't mind making a bit of a fool of myself. I thought if I get up and do something positive and fun, and I'm dressed up in a big shiny disco ball that everyone can see, I just know that people will go for it," she said.
According to UNHCR statistics, as of November 2022 there were 231,597 refugees, 127,421 pending asylum cases and 5,483 stateless persons in the UK including recent Ukrainians refugees. That's only half a per cent (0.54%) of the UK's total population.
According to the University of Oxford, an estimated 388,000 foreign-born people living in the UK in 2019 originally came to the country to seek asylum, according to the Migration Observatory's analysis of the Labour Force Survey. This made up 5% of the UK's foreign-born population in 2019 of 9.48 million and 0.6% of the UK's total 2019 resident population of around 67 million. Of these, 56% had lived in the UK for sixteen years or more.
