Ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s is asking British fans to write to their MEP to encourage co-ordinated action to help resettle refugees in the EU.
On Tuesday, World Refugee Day, the company released a blog launching its Together For Refugees campaign with the International Rescue Committee. The campaign asks people to send letters and emails to their local MEP urging them to vote for the Union Resettlement Framework, a bill which would see the EU take a joint approach to helping refugees from outside the Union.
“We’re teaming up with the International Rescue Committee to call on our fans to support a historic piece of legislation that would help refugees resettle safely in Europe. Just ONE email from you could make all the difference,” the company detailed in the blog.
The aim of the framework legislation is to standardise rules on admission, the application process and the status to be accorded to resettled people, thereby helping to reduce the need for refugees to make hazardous journeys across Europe, and alleviate the burden on nations hosting a disproportionate amount of people.
According to the European Commission, the number of persons seeking asylum from non-EU countries during the first quarter of 2017 reached 164 500.
In February, the UK’s former Minister for Immigration, Robert Goodwill, said the country would not be opting into the framework, saying that dealing with immigration at the national level “allows for greater control and flexibility over both the source countries to be resettled from and the resettlement ?process”.
Ben & Jerry’s is hoping to make a difference by helping UK voters pressure their MEPs to support the framework.
It said: “It’s simple: the more of us who ask our representatives in the European Parliament to support this law and ensure that it provides refugees with a real possibility of living in safety, the more likely it is to pass.”
If you’d like to join in, you can find out who your MEP is and contact them here.
