Interactive Android app from the UN lets users experience life as a refugee

The United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee) has developed a new interactive role-playing game for Android called “My Life as a Refugee”. The app lets users experience firsthand what it is like to be a refugee and deal with the same daily dilemmas faced by millions of refugees worldwide. It challenges the user to make difficult decisions based on real life situations, for example if conflict threatened your family, would you stay and risk your lives or try to flee, risking kidnap or torture.

 The application was developed by UNHCR as part of a new social advocacy campaign aimed at fighting intolerance and xenophobia against refugees. It has been launched to coincide with World Refugee Day that aims to highlight the dramatic increase of refugees around the world. The latest UNHCR report claimed that 800,000 people became refugees in 2011, the highest figure since 2000, with a further 3.5 million becoming Internally Displaced People (IDP).

 Through our support of Refugees United (RU), Sony Mobile has learned that mobile phone technology can provide a vital communication tool among refugees especially when combined with innovative applications like the RU app. This app is accessible from computers and mobile phones and can help displaced people to search for and reconnect with their family and friends while keeping their anonymity.

UNHCR’s recent appeal concerning the  ‘disastrous’ flows of refugees and IDP due to continuous conflicts in Central Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, prompted Sony Mobile to support World Refugee Day by donating phones and helping to highlight its campaign through our blog page.

Please go to the following page to learn more about UNHCR and how you can support them: http://donate.unhcr.org/dilemma/?utm_source=unhcr-wrd-eng&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=WRD2012?login=parameters