A Voice At The Table: Refugee Panel Completes Successful First Term
Recently named in the Kings Birthday Honours, human rights lawyer Rez Gardi MNZM, the project director for the NZRAP Secretariat and the co-director of the Universitys Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies, says its a privilege to welcome the newly …
Giving people from refugee backgrounds an official voice on issues that affect them has been the focus of the inaugural New Zealand Refugee Advisory Panel, now into its second term.
Resettlement and integration, cultural and social inclusion, mental health support, youth education, legal and immigration processes, community safety and developing leadership in refugee communities are just some of the areas the New Zealand Refugee Advisory Panel (NZRAP) has been involved with since forming in 2022.
And now six new members from around New Zealand will be joining the panel for its second term.
Recently named in the King's Birthday Honours, human rights lawyer Rez Gardi MNZM, the project director for the NZRAP Secretariat and the co-director of the University's Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies, says it's a privilege to welcome the newly appointed members.
'Their appointments reflect the calibre, depth, and diversity of leadership within refugee-background communities across Aotearoa.'
Gardi says the panel plays a vital role in ensuring the perspectives and expertise of those with lived experience of forced displacement are not only heard but embedded in government policy and practice.
'We look forward to supporting the panel as it builds on the foundations laid by its inaugural cohort.'
Highlights of the panel's first term include: developing a working definition of 'meaningful refugee participation', now adopted by the NZ government; playing a leading role in the National Refugee Resettlement Forum, alongside Immigration New Zealand; and co-drafting pledges made by the government at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, where panel members attended international conferences.
Retiring panel member Somali-born Ayan Said says serving on the panel is about ensuring refugee participation is not just symbolic but changes the system for the better.
'The NZRAP is where experience meets expertise. Meaningful refugee participation is not a favour it's a fundamental right that strengthens policies and empowers communities. True participation means moving beyond tokenism to build trust, share power, and co-create change.'
A former refugee from Syria, Rabia Talal Almbaid, another member now stepping down, says it's been an incredible honour to serve on the panel and a 'defining highlight' of his career, but the panel is in good hands.
'The newly appointed members bring remarkable talent, experiences, and insight into the space. We are excited to see them carry the work forward, as there is more work to do.'
The acting national manager of Refugee and Migrant Support, Sarah Ward, says the panel's second term will build on the strong foundations laid by its inaugural members.
'We're proud to support the NZRAP as part of our ongoing commitment to meaningful refugee participation and to New Zealand's world-class refugee resettlement programme,' she says.
'We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the outgoing panel members for their leadership and dedication and warmly welcome the new members and look forward to the important mahi ahead.'
The six new members were selected through an open nationwide process that attracted applications from across the country.
Newly appointed members 1 July 2025:
Sara Ahmad – Hamilton
Nimo Ahmed – Whangārei
Liaquat Ali Changezi – Hamilton
Nada Haroura – Dunedin
Beth Ketema – Auckland
Abrar Saleh – Auckland
Continuing members (since March 2024):
Jane Smith – Christchurch
Jose Tombe – Wellington
The New Zealand Refugee Advisory Panel is a collaboration between Immigration New Zealand and the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, supported by refugee-led organisations, academics, and civil society.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scoop
15-07-2025
- Scoop
David Robie: New Zealand Must Do More For Pacific And Confront Nuclear Powers
The New Zealand government needs to do more for its Pacific Island neighbours and stand up to nuclear powers, a distinguished journalist, media educator and author says. Professor David Robie, a recipient of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), released the latest edition of his book Eyes of Fire: The last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, which highlights the nuclear legacies of the United States and France. Robie, who has worked in Pacific journalism and academia for 50 years, recounts his experiences aboard the Greenpeace vessel the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before it was bombed in Auckland Harbour. At the time, New Zealand stood up to nuclear powers, he said. "It was pretty callous [of] the US and French authorities to think they can just carry on nuclear tests in the Pacific, far away from the metropolitan countries, out of the range of most media, and just do what they like," Robie told RNZ Pacific. "It is shocking, really." Speaking to Pacific Waves, Robie said that Aotearoa had forgotten how to stand up for the region. "The real issue in the Pacific is about climate crisis and climate justice. And we're being pushed this way and that by the US [and] by the French. The French want to make a stake in their Indo-Pacific policies as well," he said. "We need to stand up for smaller Pacific countries." Robie believes that New Zealand is failing with its diplomacy in the region. He accused the coalition government of being "too timid" and "afraid of offending President Donald Trump" to make a stand on the nuclear issue. However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand's "overarching to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency". The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy reset, New Zealand was committed to "comprehensive relationships" with Pacific Island countries. "New Zealand's identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages." The New Zealand government commits almost 60 percent of its development funding to the region. The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex. "New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions." They added that New Zealand's main focus remains on the Pacific, "where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region. "We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific Governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need," the spokesperson said. But former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, writing in the preface of Robie's book, said: "New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament." Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world. "We took nuclear powers," Robie said. "And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took. Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten". 'Look at history' France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia. Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were clean and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed. From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US. In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America's nuclear legacy, said: "Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment." However, Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as "outrageous". "It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.
Scoop
14-07-2025
- Scoop
Reporting International Migration: Less Than The Truth
Yesterday I listened to RNZ's political commentators. The principal topic was an aspect of the recently released May 2025 international migration. Kathryn Ryan starts by reminding us of the "old saying, would the last person to leave New Zealand please turn out the lights" (a saying which has been used in places other than Godzone). The latest figure for net immigration was an inflow of 14,800; a net gain. But you wouldn't have realised this. Ryan went on to say there's a big migration outflow underway right now. And she's correct if you only count New Zealand citizens. (Non-NZ citizens are people too; indeed, in that timeframe, 53,400 non-NZ citizens emigrated!) Kathryn Ryan said there was a net loss of 30,000. There was actually a (provisional) net loss of 46,300 NZ citizens. (Possibly she – or her producer – had subtracted the all-migrant net inflow from the net loss of New Zealand citizens, having interpreted the overall 14,800 net inflow as a net inflow of non-NZ citizens.) In fact, this 46,300 net loss of NZ citizens was offset by a net gain of 61,100 non-NZ citizens. (We should also note that total arrivals – not just people classified as 'immigrants' – in the year to May 2025 exceeded total departures by 3,797; less than the 14,800 ascribed to net international migration. The sum of total net arrivals in the six years to May 2025 was 244,000; an average of 40,000 per year.) The total number of people who featured (in the period from June 2024 to May 2025) as either immigrants or emigrants was 264,000; that is, a number of people equivalent to five percent of New Zealand's total population featured as either a permanent arrival or a permanent departure. This 264,000 includes 114,500 "migrant arrivals of non-NZ citizens". Half of the 114,500 estimated permanent arrivals of non-NZ citizens were citizens of either India, China, Philippines or Sri Lanka. In addition to getting the numbers wrong, a key problem with the framing of the RNZ migration discussion is that it rendered invisible these citizens of Asian countries; as people of Asian birth have been largely invisible in our intense discussions in recent years on binationalism. This gaze aversion by the political class is a kind of passive or casual racism. It is ethnicism to simply ignore the new New Zealanders who provide so much of our labour, and who generally perform their labour roles with professionalism and competence. An important aspect of this problem is to ignore the 'mammoth in the room', that there is in Aotearoa New Zealand a substantial substitution of New Zealand born residents for non-New Zealand born residents; white citizens are leaving, brown denizens are arriving. In these latest statistics, for the year to May, there were 61,100 more new New Zealanders and 46,300 fewer old New Zealanders; 61,100 minus -46,300 equals 107,400. 100,000 is two percent of five million. So, if 70% of New Zealand residents were NZ-born in May 2024, then about 68% of New Zealand residents will have been NZ-born in May 2025. (Just under 30 percent of New Zealanders were born overseas in March 2023, according to Statistics New Zealand.) The rate of 'replacement' is probably not quite that great, in that some of the citizens leaving permanently will have been naturalised rather than born in Aotearoa New Zealand. Another complicating factor is natural population growth – the excess of births over deaths – which was just over 20,000 in 2024. It would appear that about one-third of births in New Zealand (maybe more) are to mothers not themselves born in New Zealand. Population 'Replacement' is a sensitive subject. The 'far right' in much of the Eurocentric world indulges in 'replacement theory', a conspiracy theory that there is a liberal "elite" (sometimes "Jewish") agenda to replace 'whites' with 'non-whites'. (There used to be a comparable case on the 'far-left', whereby 'globalisation' was interpreted as an agenda rather than a description.) The descriptive reality of today's world is that there are disproportionately more – and substantially so – 'brown' and 'black' young people than their proportion among older age cohorts. White people are diminishing, and non-white people are increasing in numbers. That's not a problem. But it is perceived as a problem by many white people, especially disadvantaged white people in the economically polarised Euro world. If we tip-toe around this issue of changing global ethnic proportions, we leave the field to 'replacement theory' conspiracy theorists. We need to have adult conversations about the implications not just of aging populations, but also the re-culturation of our populations through demographic change. Applying this last matter to Aotearoa New Zealand, a nation state with rapid population turnover, the overall national 'personality' can be largely retained so long as immigrants come from a wide range of other countries. When I was in Sydney last year, I heard a story about the emergence of India's 'caste system' in Australia. This is the kind of cultural change that we do not want in New Zealand; such cultural colonisation can be averted by avoiding too much immigration from a single country. And through a process of cultural fusion, rather than either assimilation or the emergence of cultural silos. Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
NZ Herald
10-07-2025
- NZ Herald
Extremist white supremacist group behind race war plots remains on NZ terrorism watchlist
A US-born neo-Nazi hate group has been relisted as a terrorist entity by the New Zealand Government. A paper published by police explains why and details the arrest of group members overseas. Photo / File A violent neo-Nazi hate group with international reach has been relisted as a terrorist entity by the New Zealand Government, amid ongoing efforts to prevent extremist ideologies from taking root or operating within the country. The Base is a white supremacist 'militant
