With 97% of Relief International’s staff members and volunteers being local nationals, many of them are or have been refugees themselves.
This means our programs are rooted in shared realities and deeply embedded in communities, ensuring refugees have access to the tools they need to recover and shape their own futures.
Remarkably, as of June 2025, 122 million people are forcibly displaced and 42.7 million people have been forced to flee their home countries due to conflict, crisis, or disaster.
With no choice but to leave everything behind, including family members, homes, livelihoods, education, medication and a sense of belonging, more often than not the refugees we support are traumatized and in dire need of essential services.
At Relief International, we provide life-saving support to refugees amidst some of the world’s worst displacement crises.
From South Sudan, to Pakistan, Lebanon and Türkiye, we support the right of refugees to seek shelter, safety, dignity and opportunity.
Türkiye: Life-changing services for Syrian refugees with disabilities.
Türkiye hosts the world’s second largest number of refugees from neighboring war-torn or instable countries, and Relief International has been working with local partners to deliver life-changing services there for more than 10 years.
Focusing on Syrian refugees with disabilities—many of them severely injured by war and 2023’s devastating earthquake—we provide physical rehabilitation, prosthetics, assistive devices and mental health support.
A Syrian refugee receives a prosthetic and physical rehabilitation from a Relief International supported center in Hatay.
Pakistan: Afghan refugees empowered through education and livelihoods programs.
In Pakistan, 58% of the 284,028 people directly reached by Relief International since 2019 have been Afghan refugees.
Through emergency, livelihoods, education and mental health programs we’ve worked alongside refugee communities to build safer schools for Afghan children, empower Afghan Community Forums and Parent Teacher Committees, and provide life-saving relief services.
Waheed, an education facilitator at one of Relief International’s Accelerated Learning Program centers for Afghan children, is himself a refugee from Afghanistan.
“Refugees are not just numbers; we are people with stories and dreams. Relief International gave us a chance to rebuild,” says Waheed.
Meanwhile Shazia is one of the refugees we have provided livelihoods support for through our Home-Based Skill Development program. Now thriving, Shazia is able to support her family and run her own business within the local community.
"If my father were alive, he would be happy to see how I am supporting our family through this dignified opportunity provided to us from Relief International. I feel proud to stand on my own as a successful tailor and help my family in a meaningful way," says Shazia.
South Sudan: Critical healthcare for Sudanese refugees.
As the refugee population in South Sudan continues to surge due to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, Relief International is providing life-saving services and essential care. Last year we directly supported more than 100,000 refugees in dire need.
One of those refugees was Bisma, a 32-year-old Sudanese refugee sheltering in Batil Camp in Maban County, who we supported with critical healthcare during her pregnancy.
"Relief International supported me from the very beginning through every antenatal and postnatal check-up until I safely delivered my baby. After years of losing my seven pregnancies during displacement, I can finally hold my healthy daughter in my arms. My baby girl is 18 months old now. I will be forever grateful. This has really changed my life," says Bisma.
These life-saving programs across the globe are made possible by Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), South Sudan Humanitarian Fund (SSHF), GOAL, Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Global Giving, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, AWS Imagine Grant.
