A Refugee Housing Unit inside the store in Oslo, Norway raised awareness about forced displacement among both staff and customers at IKEA.
Staff at IKEA in Oslo were listening with great interest to the CEO of the IKEA Foundation, Per Heggenes. © UNHCR/Anders Aalbu
“Is it for sale?” a customer asked when passing by on her way to the tills.
“It is a Refugee Housing Unit,” an IKEA employee explained, unintentionally making the customer slightly embarrassed that she thought it was meant for the garden.
On 19 June, and in front of a large number of IKEA staff, IKEA in Oslo opened an exhibition marking World Refugee Day and showcasing a Refugee Housing Unit in the middle of the store.
“This topic is too important to be left with only one day. That’s why we want to have the Refugee Housing Unit up for a full week, reaching as many as possible,” said project leader for World Refugee Day at IKEA Norway, Dan Sandmoen.
The very visible and strategically placed Refugee Housing Unit cannot be missed by the many thousand customers who pass by.
The CEO of the IKEA Foundation, Per Heggenes, explained how Refugee Housing Units are making a difference in several situations around the world, especially in Eastern Africa, a region of focus for the IKEA Foundation, right now affected by the conflict in Sudan.
“The violence in Sudan is a devastating human tragedy. It is our responsibility to alleviate the suffering of those caught in the crossfire,” Heggenes said and added that 3,000 Refugee Housing Units are now being deployed to Sudan’s neighbouring countries.
This year, Refugee Housing Units have also been deployed with urgency to the earthquake-affected areas of Syria and Türkiye.
The Refugee Housing unit is an innovative shelter solution, developed from a collaborative project by Better Shelter and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with support from the IKEA Foundation. The shelters, which provide a more lasting and dignified solution to people forced to flee, were first put in production in 2015. Today, a total of 80,000 Refugee Housing Units are deployed in 80 different countries across the world.
Hope away from home
UNHCR’s Spokesperson in Norway, Anders Aalbu, shared some of the most important and telling facts from UNHCR’s recently published Global Trends report, providing an overview of the situation for the world’s forcibly displaced, but also the hope they can carry with them.
“Giving refugees hope away from home is about promoting refugees’ rights to apply for jobs, enroll in schools, and access services like housing and health care,” Aalbu said, and in the following gave credit to IKEA for providing both hope and solutions for refugees in Norway.
IKEA has been successful in running a Norwegian “Skills for Employment” program in cooperation with Norwegian employment and integration authorities. IKEA’s warehouse at Furuset outside Oslo, has employees with sixty different nationalities, some of them having gone through the program.
The installation at IKEA’s flagship store in Oslo also provided information about the largest ongoing emergencies that are causing forced displacement, allowing customers to scan QR-codes for more information.
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