“Background, Present Status and Challenges of the Iraqi and Syrian Refugee Problem: From an Experience-based Perspective as Chief Representative of the JICA Iraq Office”

Lecturer: Shohei Hara, Head of the Office for Global Issues and Development Partnership, Planning Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

　The Kochi University Center for International Collaboration hosted a lecture meeting, entitled “Background, Present Status and Challenges of the Iraqi and Syrian Refugee Problem: From an Experience-based Perspective as Chief Representative of JICA Iraq Office,” on Wednesday, January 11, 2017.

  We invited Shohei Hara, Head of the Office for Global Issues and Development Partnership, Planning Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to deliver a lecture mainly on “JICA’s assistance to Iraq and issues concerning refugees and internally displaced people” based on his own experience as the former Chief Representative of JICA Iraq Office. His lecture was full of specific details that only those working on the frontline could provide and was told in terms easy to understand for students who had no particular knowledge about the “refugee/immigrant problem” beforehand, while making some comparison with Japan. This gave us an invaluable opportunity to think about our living environment and other things that we took for granted from different angles.

  This lecture was attended by about 60 people, consisting not only of faculty and staff members and students of Kochi University, but also participants from outside the University. We have received positive feedback from participants, including enthusiastic comments showing their willingness to think deeply about the refugee problem, etc. and accordingly take action themselves, such as “The lecture gave me the opportunity to learn about the lives of refugees and internally displaced people, their background and causes of these issues, and to think about what we can do and what efforts we should make to deal with what is going on right now. I would like to find out more about this problem myself and take my learning to the next level.”

  The lecture was closed with the lecturer’s passionate message: “I would like each one of you to continue to pay attention to the problems happening on the frontline.