SALO awarded Intercultural Achievement Recent Events Award

SALO is proud to announce that it has been awarded the Intercultural Achievement Recent Events Award for its project: “South African Foreign & Migrant Policy and Xenophobia” by the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This award honours successful and innovative civil society projects in the field of intercultural and interreligious dialogue. SALO’s Ineke Stemmet attended the ceremony in Vienna, together with the other recipients of the award from all over the world. The video of our project can be viewed here: https://twitter.com/MFA_Austria/status/1582413220836683777.

This project enables successful community dialogue in townships highlighting racism, xenophobia, and attitudes towards migrants and has been widely recognised. Recent xenophobic sentiments both from political actors and members of society have weaponised these inequalities at the expense of migrants. In November 2021, the South African government announced that it would not renew the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) and has begun a process of reviewing the National Labour Migration Policy, along with the Employment Services Act, which will impact the lives of many Zimbabwean and other African migrants residing in South Africa. This project counters the xenophobic narrative that has become mainstream in South Africa and creates a safe space and a platform for those that are most affected by the changes in migration policy. SALO brings these rights-holders together with duty-bearers that are entrusted to safeguard the rights of all people living in South Africa. This specific project comprises community dialogues and wishes to promote human rights and provide access to duty-bearers for marginalised people in South Africa, especially migrants. The prize money will be used to strengthen this project to continue the work SALO does on the ground.