Earlier this week, our Italian member Diaconia Valdese was awarded the Nansen Award by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for its outstanding work on Human Corridors, which provide refugees in Lebanon with a legal and safe pathway to be relocated in Italy. 

This prestigious prize is awarded each year by the UN agency to persons or organisations committed to helping displaced people who have had to flee their homes. Luca Maria Negro (President of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy) and Alessandro Trotta (who moderates the Waldensian table) have dedicated the achievement to “all those people who have not had the opportunity to benefit from the corridors” and who find themselves in inhumane conditions in Lybian migrant centres.

Active since 2015, the Humanitarian Corridors is a pilot-project first of its kind in Europe and has already been praised in the past for its effectiveness. Run in cooperation with the NGO Mediterranean Hope and Sant’Egidio Community, this project is being replicated in other European countries and serves as a good practice model.

From Eurodiaconia we send the warmest wishes and congratulations to our Italian member for this important prize and landmark step in their project. Our work on migration and integration is an important part of what our policy officers do in Brussels, and we often rely on the precious inputs from Diaconia Valdese to guide our work. We have recently published a policy paper on the integration of migrants and refugees and in November we are organising the Migration Network meeting which will take place in Greece.

To know more about our work on migration, please read our policy paper.

For more details about the Network Meeting, please check out the event page.