Delphine Rouilleault, director general of France Terre d’Asile, indicated on Friday evening March 4 on franceinfo that 250 Ukrainian refugees are already being cared for in Paris in a single reception center, “Urgence Ukraine”, which opened its doors on Thursday. in the 18th arrondissement, and is managed by the association. About twenty employees and as many associative partners allow the site to operate for the time being.
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franceinfo: What is the exact mission of this reception area?
Delphine Rustault: This place is intended to allow people arriving from Ukraine in Paris, in great destitution, to find both food aid, basic necessities, and to benefit from accommodation. From next week, they will also be able to benefit from the temporary residence permit, and therefore from all the administrative part allowing them to benefit from it. The venue opened Thursday afternoon. We welcomed about fifty people, and 200 more on Friday. It is assumed that this will continue to increase in the coming days.
How many people do you expect to accommodate?
We prepare day by day, and at the same time, we try to anticipate. We are in a logic where every day new accommodation places are open, to accommodate people as they arrive. We have a network of ultra-responsive partners who are able to provide us with food aid or baby products within two hours, since we have a lot of families with young children. At the same time, on the side of the State services and the communities, there is work to anticipate greater reception capacities, on the assumption that people would be led to arrive in greater numbers and to stay Longer. It’s a place where people come and go during the day, we are a day center with the capacity to accommodate large flows of people.
Are they mostly families?
We have a lot of mothers with children, a few men too. We have a lot of Ukrainians, but also foreigners who lived in Ukraine, they represent about 25% of the people we saw. We have people who arrive having left everything in their country, who need help to recover a minimum of things, to be able to rest. There are food and health needs with doctors present on site, and also psychological needs since they are extremely traumatized.
Are these reception centers likely to multiply?
These initiatives are intended to be deployed in all the big cities, I suppose that most departments are thinking of reception places like this. The logic is that it is better to have all the actors concerned on the same site than to push people to walk from one reception system to another according to their needs. We are seeing the birth of similar structures in other cities. The subject is to ensure that France will have, over time, the capacity to receive all these people, and also continue to take care of asylum seekers arriving from many other conflict zones.