Interview with Sirazul Islam, Community Engagement Coordinator at ENS

Addressing statelessness requires a collective, collaborative approach, which is vital to ENS’s work. What drives your work in community engagement and what makes this area of work so important? 

Before I joined ENS as Community Engagement Coordinator, I was a community member, and that gives me a lot more insight than had I not been a community member. Something that drives my work in community engagement is being able to see first hand the positive impact it's had on me and on the other community members. 

If I look back at my journey from 2019, when I was just dabbling with ENS and sending them an e-mail to join their conferences. At that time, I was with the British Rohingya Community, which I am the youth director of, but we just didn’t have the connections to do advocacy within Europe or on statelessness. 

Fast forward five years and I am very heavily involved in community engagement. It just gave me a complete new drive and perspective of what you can achieve if you’re part of a network rather than trying to do things on your own. There were many things that ENS or one of our members have already done. So, for example, doing EU advocacy, or the Stateless Journeys campaign, or trying to amplify voices – I didn’t have to start from the beginning. Community engagement allows you to connect with so many more networks and become part of a wider community, a wider family, and you don’t have to do everything yourself from step one. 

You’ve had lots of opportunities to speak out about statelessness at various events and conferences, but often, as you know, statelessness is missing in these spaces – even in the migration sector. How do we ensure statelessness is on the agenda? 

One thing that people don’t realise, and I’ve had the privilege of realising because I’ve attended many, many events and conferences, is that statelessness is very intersectional. Statelessness is literally embedded in most of the issues that the migration sector works in. If you look at the root causes of statelessness, you can see issues like gender discriminatory laws, nationality laws, genocide, refugee crises. I’m someone who is a refugee/was a refugee, but I have also been stateless. But people still get confused because they'll be like how can you be a refugee but also stateless at the same time? 

To ensure statelessness is on the agenda, I think wherever we’re going, if the event or conference is about the refugee crisis, or gender discrimination, we need to think – how do these issues affect people who are also stateless? Because it's people who are stateless that end up missing in spaces where they actually need their voices heard. You would be surprised to know how intersectional statelessness is with many of the issues we work on every day.  

In August we were all shocked by the racist riots that took place across the UK, following the tragic attack in Southport. You responded quickly and held a support session for communities we work with. How has this situation impacted people and communities we’re supporting?  

Firstly, I’d like to mention that the attacks that happened in the UK obviously do not reflect the wider community we are part of. The UK is a very diverse place and many of our members are in very diverse places, and we are obviously very shocked because it’s the first time something like this has happened in the time I’ve lived here. 

We quickly held a community session for our community members to firstly ask them to see if they're alright, and to signpost them to different support and resources. One thing that I realised in that call is that despite all of the riots that took place, people look to the UK as a source of hope, multiculturalism and diversity. So they were very, very shocked when these riots took place. 

People were scared and those feelings of not belonging somewhere have creeped up again. Many of our community members have escaped these experiences for a better life, only to come across these feelings and situations again here. So that has really impacted them.  

Though the situation impacted them, it also reminded our community members that they are not alone and why networks are really important. Moreover, it reminded people of the need to be kind.  

It’s a very stark reminder for the public to think about what people that have escaped and that they've come to this country for a better life. 

With your own lived experience, you’ve been called upon to speak out about statelessness, and to represent the organisation and the wider community. In your own experience – what does a bad/good storytelling experience feel like? 

I think I've had a combination of both. I honestly am happy when I am invited to opportunities where I can tell my story because I'm very proud of my story. I was born in a refugee camp and now I have a law degree. I have a master's in law and I'm working at the European Network on Statelessness.  

What a bad storytelling experience feels like is when it feels extractive. Sometimes people do this on purpose, but there are some people who do it inadvertently and who don't do it on purpose. You could have all the good intentions in the world, but if you are not aware of what you're doing, you're just probably as bad as the person who is doing it on purpose. 

I’ve been asked to basically tell my story in a very sad manner where it would accrue some sympathy. I've had an experience where the only e-mail was: can you tell us your story about statelessness or about being living life as a refugee and where you are? And to me that feels very extractive. I really do understand that sometimes we do need these stories to amplify our voices, to create awareness. But there's a very fine line between creating awareness and using stories for extractive purposes. 

So what does a good storytelling experience feels like?  

Am I going to be remunerated for my time? It's not just that one hour webinar I'd have to plan. At the very minimum I have to do my own research on your organisation, on that webinar. Who else is going to be there? Financial transparency is very, very important because I think in our sector it's very easy to take for granted people's time and expertise. 

Secondly, transparency about what you're going to do with the story - are you going to publish it somewhere? If yes, where? Are you going to send me the final draft? Will you let me edit things that I might not want out there in the public? 

Thirdly, how comfortable are you with me not sharing everything you want me to? For example, if I only want to talk only about me being a refugee or me being stateless for a minute or two and I spend the next 10 minutes talking about policy, etc - are you comfortable with that? 

Reflecting on our new Storytelling Guidelines, which you co-created in partnership with our wider community, Statefree and Apatride Network, how do we best ensure that people with lived experience are at the forefront of tackling statelessness, and that this process is empowering? 

We've created these storytelling guidelines with people who, like myself, have lived or learned experiences of statelessness. And these people have again, like myself, been through many various bad or good storytelling experiences. So the guidelines are very reflective of our experiences. 

 To ensure that people with lived experiences are at the forefront of tackling statelessness, I think one thing we need to remember is that within our sector, there's two ways to make an impact.  

One is through storytelling and making sure that people know about the stories of being stateless, and that's something that comes very easy to people who are community members because essentially it's their story. 

 But there's another way – taking it to another level - which is doing advocacy around Europe, with UNHCR or even global advocacy where people are present in rooms and at tables where decisions are made. People can be consulted directly rather than having an organisation in the middle consult them and then feedback to the person or the people who would make those decisions. This ensures that the process is empowering because not only do you say to the to the community members that you are more than your story, but you also give them an opportunity to make real distinctive change.  

 You attended Comic Relief’s Across Borders summit in Athens last year. Could you share some of the opportunities that have come from that? 

Again this is one of the positive opportunities I’ve had from being a member of ENS. It was great. I learned many things. I met many different people, including some Rohingyas who lived in Greece who I didn’t know about. It’s nice to be part of a network which gives you opportunities to do this. 

Fast forward to a month or two ago, we had a celebratory event on the Across Border summit. I was asked to do a talk - Ted talk style – on tokenism and the effects that it could have on community members and people with lived experience.  

I mentioned that when I do a job or when I go and tell my story, I always think about whether this is tokenism or not. Whether I am part of this table for the sake of checking boxes - being brown, being Rohingya, being stateless, being a refugee - or whether I am actually valued as a person as an individual, as someone with a law degree, as someone with years of experience working in this sector. 

I mentioned that I used to worry when I first joined ENS that I had been hired for tokenistic reasons rather than because they actually wanted me and preferred me over the other candidates that they had, and this was a genuine worry that I had. 

Chris Nash picked up on that and spoke to me about it to reassure me that that was not the case obviously, and that there were many other strong candidates and that they wanted me to join for my experiences and for what I can bring to the table rather than for my background. 

So I’d like to share a message to other people within this sector and the wider sector, that when you're working with people who have lived experiences of different migratory issues or anything is that they will always have that constant fear that they're a token. And they have the needs of an entire community on their shoulder, which can be very, very hard.  

These issues will always pop up so you need to reassure your employees that you're more than your story, you're more than a refugee, you're more than a person who was stateless; that you can have an identity beyond your past. I think that's very, very powerful, but also very thoughtful and considerate – and a practice that should be in our wider sector.  

What have been the highlights of your role so far/what’s coming up for you that you’re looking forward to? 

I am the employee, I think, who has travelled the most within the first six months of joining ENS. I've been to many different seminars and conferences and I love it and I think I do quite well at it. The travelling is very positive for me, just being able to experience different people, different situations, different scenarios where we I am able to talk about statelessness so passionately. 

Something  I'm looking forward to is, in October, we will be in Geneva for the launch of the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, led by UNHCR. As part of the adjoining Regional Network Labs, I am hosting a workshop with United Stateless and Statefree on community engagement. I'm really looking forward to working with that community and with different people on this important topic.