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Marta Welander is the founder of Refugee Rights Europe, an organisation she established whilst studying for a PhD at the University of Westminster. The organisation research the situation of refugee and displaced people across Europe. She also supports and is involved in the UK-based, refugee-led initiative Hopetowns.

Career
Marta has previously worked in non-governmental organisations, including the Refugee Council UK, Front Line Defenders, and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights network. Marta worked as Deputy Director of a small international human rights and peacebuilding organisation.

Before that, she facilitated collaboration between member NGOs of a vast global partnership, and was a founding member of a women’s rights coalition in the Middle East & North Africa.

Activism
Marta has primarily used research and campaigning to tackle the human rights violations facing refugees in Europe. In April 2017, she delivered a TEDtalk on her Refugee Rights Data Project, which aimed to fill the information gaps relating to human rights violations and humanitarian standards.

In March 2018, her organisation Refugee Rights Europe published new research on the situation of refugees. It is one of the largest independent studies of refugees stranded in Paris. A fifth of respondents claimed they had suffered physical violence by Parisians, while 5% stated that they had experienced sexual abuse from French citizens. More than one in 10 said they knew at least one refugee who had died while stranded in Paris.