Ahead of World Refugee Day, dozens of multinationals pledge to hire and train 250,000 refugees in Europe

New York
CNN
 — 

Just ahead of World Refugee Day, 41 multinational companies on Monday publicly pledged to provide jobs, training and connections to work opportunities for more than 250,000 refugees in Europe.

They include Accenture, Adecco, Amazon, Cisco, Generali, Hilton, ISS, Marriott International, Microsoft, Randstad, Starbucks and The Body Shop.

The company pledges, which will be carried out over the next three years, are being made at a business summit in Paris organized by the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a global business coalition of more than 300 companies that have committed to help economically integrate people who have fled their home countries to escape war and political persecution.

The physical, psychological and financial trauma that results from abruptly leaving life as you knew it behind, not to mention loved ones who remain in danger, runs deep.

But having a job can give refugees a sense of some stability, and aid them both financially and socially.

“Having money and a job can help them get a bit of dignity and a feeling that they are contributing, which can be cathartic,” said Margot Slattery, the global head of diversity and inclusion at workplace facilities management company ISS. “It gives them something in the morning to do and helps them integrate into their [new] community.”

It also allows them to not rely solely on the social safety net benefits that their new countries have provided to survive. And, just as importantly, it helps pay for the mobile phone and internet service they need to stay in touch with their families back home, and to send them money and food parcels, Slattery noted.

Though most of the company pledges made on Monday apply to refugees of all nationalities, there is a special focus on Ukrainian refugees, whose numbers swelled to more than 5 million last year.

“With no end in sight to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and with the European Union welcoming millions of Ukrainians — it’s imperative that refugees are offered longer-term inclusion and hope through integration into the labor market,” said Margaritis Schinas, Vice President of the European Commission, in prepared remarks for the summit.

Among the companies that are making new pledges this week, many have already been hiring or training refugees in Europe over the past year.

ISS, for instance, has already hired 500 refugees in Europe — a majority of them Ukrainian women — since March of last year. But on Monday, it committed to hiring another 1,000 refugees across its European operations and to provide training, upskilling and development opportunities to its refugee employees across all countries.

Other companies planning to hire people directly include Amazon, which said it will hire at least 5,000 refugees; Hilton and Marriott, which each promised to bring on 1,500 people; and Teleperformance, which plans to onboard at least 500 refugees.

Others making hiring commitments include Adidas, Blackstone, BP, Hyatt, Ipsos, L’Oréal Group, Novartis, PepsiCo, Pfizer and The Kraft Heinz Company.

Some companies, meanwhile, have made very specific training commitments. Cisco, for example, will offer programming and cybersecurity training in Ukrainian for 10,000 refugees. They will then be included in Cisco’s Talent Bridge Matching Engine, to connect refugees to jobs across Cisco’s ecosystem.

The pledges made Monday represent the single largest batch of commitments made in the history of the Tent Partnership, which was founded in 2016.

But even helping 250,000 refugees will only cover a mere fraction of those who need assistance. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates the number of refugees worldwide is now approaching 35 million people, with more than 12 million of them in Europe. And those numbers don’t include the millions of forcibly displaced people who have not been granted refugee status.

— CNN’s Catherine Shoichet contributed to this report.