We’ve launched Our Island II: Personal Accounts of Refugees in Malta!

It is a book about integration and the paths that people follow — voluntarily or otherwise — as they slowly make Malta home, their island.

Neil Falzon, aditus Director, talking to the Times of Malta

On Friday, May 10, at the Casino Maltese, Valletta, aditus foundation launched Our Island II: Personal Accounts of Refugees in Malta with the support of the European Parliament Office in MaltaUNHCR Malta and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. The publication of Our Island II, the second in the Our Island series of migration books, was funded through the President’s Award for Creativity, which is managed by Arts Council Malta.

The launch was a great success, with the upper gallery of the Casino Maltese full of friends and fans of the project, and books flying off the tables. Our guests included civil society colleagues, members of the press and many figures from Malta’s diverse migrant community.

Mary and Ousmane, two contributors to Our Island II, as well as aditus Director Neil Falzon, Senior Communication Coordinator at ECRE Villads Zahle and European Parliament Office in Malta Acting Head Anna Zammit addressed the gathered guests at the start of the evening.

Neil, in his opening speech, contemplated the value of Our Island as a vehicle for the revelation that is migrant voices and first-person migrant stories: new arrivals making Malta their own and explaining how that endeavour continues to unfold in their own words — rather than either being rendered anonymous and invisible by generic news coverage, public discourse and government policy, or being spoken for through the work of their NGO advocates.

In closing, Mary, originally from Sierra Leone, offered humour and encouragement. She arrived in Malta as a war refugee, wife and mother. She is now a Mater Dei Hospital paediatric nurse, homeowner and proud taxpayer studying for a master’s degree having started her university education in Malta. Mary insisted, “Malta gave me a chance, a second chance at life… So, brothers and sisters, do not be disheartened. To be a refugee is not a disease. You can make it. If I can make it, you can also make it.

How can I obtain my copy of Our Island I and II?

For a copy of Our Island II (or Our Island I) against a nominal donation, write to us or give us a ring.


To see the album of Elisa Von Brockdorff’s fabulous photos from the launch, visit our Flickr page.


Announcing Two New Projects!

aditus is pleased to announce two exciting new projects we’ve taken on, in cooperation with four esteemed partner organisations.

Project Integrated is an undertaking shared by aditus, JRS Malta and Integra Foundation, with the support of UNHCR Malta. The three Maltese NGOs will integrate their best efforts, until the end of 2015, for the sake of better integrating beneficiaries of international protection in the local context – to help them profit fully from their human rights and to restore their pride as independent and successful contributors to society.

In anticipation of the integration policy which Malta is meant to publish this year, Project Integrated will work to help beneficiaries see some of the everyday benefits that come directly, in theory, from their protected status. In education, healthcare and employment, for example, many obstacles remain, even as beneficiaries have the right to all three: We intend to advance integration through counselling, facilitating access to services, monitoring the practical lapses in integration and ongoing advocacy with the Maltese authorities and the press.

In particular, aditus will offer its legal expertise to Project Integrated through the further mobilisation of its Pro Bono Unit. aditus will also build on the insights gained in our earlier projects, especially the Stakeholder Information Sessions, to organise capacity-building activities with its partners.

Next, as a member of the European Network on Statelessness, aditus will be the Maltese focal point for the project Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary DetentionThe European Network on Statelessness is a group of NGOs, academic initiatives and individual experts with over 90 members in 30 European countries. The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion will be an expert partner on the project; and in March, American photojournalist Greg Constantine will be in Malta to document the problem. Nowhere People, the website featuring his work on statelessness, is here.

Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention, a three-year project, will address the increase in Europe of immigration detention, including as a form of punishment, and the state criminalisation of irregular migration, the lack of protection for the stateless and the gulf between the rights afforded to the stateless on paper, according to legal standards, and the actual realisation of those rights. The gulf, in fact, leaves many stateless persons vulnerable to arbitrary detention in Europe.

Protecting Stateless Persons will study each national reality of statelessness, offer region- and country-specific tools to protect the stateless, train lawyers, NGOs and others to use those tools and advocate for protection.