INTRODUCING ICORN – THE CITY AS A SANCTUARY

This report aims to introduce an organisation called the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). Derived from the Sanctuary Movement, ICORN assists refugee artists around the world. The Sanctuary Movement was developed in the United States and Canada as a network of over 500 safe havens for Central American refugees. From the 2000s on, the movement focused more on moral injustices in the national immigration system and sought to confront global injustices on local levels. In turn, in the UK and Ireland the City of Sanctuary movement started in 2005 and turned into a network of over 60 towns and cities proud of being safe places for people seeking sanctuary and helping them to integrate in the local communities. Each ICORN city focuses on one writer/artist at a time and provides him/her with a safe place to stay and economic security for a standard term of two years. Currently, over 55 cities worldwide are part of the network (ICORN 2016).