Yonous Muhammadi

I was forced to leave Afghanistan in 1997, during my final semester as an undergraduate medical student, completing my internship in a hospital. As a refugee, I stayed in Pakistan and then Iran, where I also worked to organize and support Afghan refugees. I arrived in Greece in September 2001 as an asylum seeker and was recognised as a beneficiary of international protection in 2004. In Greece, from the very beginning, I worked hard to organise and mobilise refugees and asylum seekers.

Soon and with hard work, with my colleagues, also asylum seekers, we managed to organise the asylum seekers’ movement, which later, in 2004, evolved into a strong network of refugee communities, the Greek Refugee Forum, which tries to promote cooperation between the refugee communities themselves and to support their integration and active participation at all levels in the host society. I currently work as the director and coordinator of the Greek Refugee Forum.  My efforts are always aimed at the local, national and international level. In 2016, my work and commitment, especially against hate crimes and hate speech, was honoured by Human Rights Watch as I received the Alison Des Forges Award in the USA for Extraordinary Activism.

In the same year my idea, “Refugees’ Ideas and Solution for Europe (RISE)”, was the winner of the Idea Challenge, out of almost 400 ideas from all over Europe, organised every year by Advocate Europe in Brussels. Through this award, I am proud to have co-founded RISE, a European network of refugee communities advocating for the inclusion and meaningful participation of refugees and migrants in the decision-making process at national and European level. In June 2017, I was elected as a member of the advisory group of the Fundamental Rights Platform at the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), bridging communities in the field with decision-makers at European level. In addition, in 2019 I was selected as a recipient of the Child-10 awards, due to my work on unaccompanied minors and children in Europe.

In 2020 I was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the European Civic Forum (ECF) representing refugee and migrant communities and connecting them with other civil society organisations in Europe. Since 2020 I am also a member of the European Commission’s expert group on migration and asylum. In December 2023 I was elected as a member of the Bureau of the European Migration Forum in the European Economic and Social Committee.

In December 2018, I finally acquired Greek citizenship and I am now also a Greek citizen. I am the initiator of the Democracy4all initiative, which seeks political participation and access to the decision-making table for people with refugee/migrant background.