Overview of Palestinian resettlement in Brazil

Juliana A. Dominguez, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Rosana Baeninger, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

From September to October/2007, Brazilian UNHCR Brazil, NGO`s and CONARE received about 22 Palestinian families to settle in Sao Paulo state and 18 families in Rio Grande do Sul. Apart from Canada and New Zealand, in recent years Brazil and Chile has been the only countries to offer resettlement to Palestinian refugees from Iraq. Since 2003, most of the Palestinian refugees have been living 60 kilometres from the Iraq border in Ruwayshed, Jordan. As Jordan is not a signatory member of the Convention on Refugees of 1951 and does not have national legislation on refugees. There is no legal framework to deal with issues of refugees. Without any prospect of local integration, opportunities... In this paper the focus will be the on these refugees group who are confined in the Ruwayshid refugee camp and were acepted to be resettlement in Brazil.