The role of intercultural mediators in working with forcibly displaced persons from Ukraine
Starting in February 2022, Romania faced a massive influx of forcibly displaced people from Ukraine as a consequence of the armed conflict triggered by Russia. According to the press release sent by the General Inspectorate of the Border Police, “starting with 10.02.2022 (pre-conflict period), until 24.01.2024, 24.00, at the national level, 7,186,525 Ukrainian citizens entered Romania”. At the same time, Eurostat statistical data show that at the end of November 2023, there were over 144,000 Ukrainian citizens in Romania under temporary protection.
Like the other types of people who benefit from a form of protection in Romania, forcibly displaced people from Ukraine face various problems related to social integration, on the labor market, medical assistance, education, etc., as a result of cultural differences, linguistic, bureaucratic between the two countries. To solve these problems, migrants contact various institutions/authorities involved in the integration process, which is the reason why the need to work with intercultural mediators has arisen.
In general, intercultural mediators are foreigners who mediate between migrants and institutions in Romania, people who have connections and relationships in the communities of foreigners they come from.
The main role of intercultural mediators is to facilitate the accommodation and integration of migrants in Romanian society, providing services in various fields such as: social, health, school, judicial, public administration, etc. Even if mediators are often used as translators, most of them help migrants to understand the various procedures, to get their documents, to attend Romanian language courses, if they wish.
As far as the health field is concerned, research carried out among people forcibly displaced from Ukraine revealed that many of them encountered problems in accessing health services, due to language barriers and the differences between the health systems in Romania and Ukraine.
In order to facilitate the resolution of such problems, ICAR Foundation created a network of intercultural health mediators within the RAZOM (TOGETHER) project, Romanian and Ukrainian/Russian speakers, who participated in 2 specific training sessions in order to accompany and facilitate access of people forcibly displaced from Ukraine to medical services.
The project “RAZOM (TOGETHER) – Network of physical and mental health services adapted to the needs of Ukrainian refugees“ is implemented by the ICAR Foundation in partnership with the Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims “Memoria” (RCTV Memoria) with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Romania, programme funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through EEA Grants 2014 – 2021.
