Mock conference: The UN Refugee Agency meeting

On May, 22 the first- and the second-year MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpretation and Translation held a joint mock conference devoted to the problems of the Syrian refugees. Representatives of such countries as Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Germany, Sweden and a representative of the EU delivered a speech at the UN Refugee Agency meeting. The speakers presented reports on the situation concerning Syrian refugees in their own countries, presented statistics of the number of refugees and also spoke about main legal, economic and social problems which the refugees, trying to escape Syrian military conflict, are facing now. Lidia Yaitskova, for instance, made a speech on behalf of the President of the Baden-Württemberg Refugee Council and a member of the German pro-refugees organization, PROASIL, Angelika von Loeper. The firtst-year MA student Liliya Petrova spoke on behalf of the Consul General of the Turkish Republic in the Russian Federation Tancu Bilgic and talked about the Syrian refugees in Turkey and the support they receive from the Turkish government.

The invited guest of the meeting was the professor of the Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Bruce Leimsidor, who also made a contribution, listened carefully to the MA students’ speeches and commented on both speeches and simultaneous interpretation. He also answered the journalists’ questions who also asked the opinion of the representatives of the countries as well.