ISS to Hire 1,000 Refugees Across its European Business

• Content
• People
• ISS to Hire 1,000 Refugees Across its European Business

22 June 2023

Several businesses, including FM company ISS, are pledging to provide jobs and training to more than 250,000 refugees across Europe over the next three years.

At an announcement at Tent Partnership for Refugee’s European Business Summit in Paris, ISS confirmed it would hire 1,000 refugees, including Ukrainian women, across its European business over the next three years.

ISS will provide training, upskilling and development opportunities to the refugees.

Amazon, Marriott International and Microsoft have also joined the pledge, collectively marking the most significant set of business commitments ever made to advance the economic integration of refugees.

Last year, with Tent, ISS committed to hire 1,000 refugees in North America by 2025. ISS also signed up to Tent’s Sunflower Project, committing to hire, train and mentor Ukrainian refugees in Poland and Spain. During the past year, ISS has hired more than 550 refugees in Europe alone.

Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder and President of the Tent Partnership for Refugees and CEO and founder of Chobani, said:

“Ukrainian refugee women face many hurdles when finding jobs - from not knowing the local language to having to juggle childcare responsibilities. Businesses must do more to reduce these barriers, and help these incredible, strong, talented people enter the workforce.

‘The moment a refugee gets a job is the moment they stop being a refugee. I’m so proud that the companies stepping up today, including ISS, will help Ukrainian women and other refugees across Europe stand on their own two feet, giving them a chance to live lives of dignity.”

Refugee Crisis Facts and Figures

• 117.2 million people will be forcibly displaced or stateless in 2023, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees figures
• Over 70 per cent of the world’s refugees and internally displaced people come from the most climate-vulnerable countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Central Sahel, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen
• The number of refugees in Europe more than doubled in 2022 and the number who were internally displaced rose to almost 9 million
• In the first nine months of 2022, 1,157 people are known to have lost their lives or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea, with an additional estimated 368 victims along the North-west Africa maritime route
• Over 8.2 million refugees fleeing Ukraine have been recorded across Europe
• Spillover from the Sahel crisis in Africa saw an estimated 8,500 Burkinabé nationals arrive in Bénin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo between April 2021 and July 2022
• In Ethiopia, 1.37 million people have been displaced from the western part of the Tigray region since November 2020, while drought and conflict had displaced 1.233 million people within Somalia as of August 2022
• Sudan continues to host 1.147 million refugees and asylum-seekers as well as 3.7 million IDPs (500,000 have been displaced since July 2021)
• From January to September 2022, irregular sea arrivals to Italy, Malta, and Spain along the Central and Western Mediterranean routes as well as the North-west Africa maritime route numbered 80,437, representing a 19 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2021

Picture: a photograph of four people holding hands. Image Credit: ISS

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 22 June 2023

Share

Related Articles