CAPE TOWN, May 31 (Xinhua) -- The 3rd Refugee Food Festival will be launched in Cape Town next month to help refugees facilitate their integration into local communities, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Thursday.
It will be the first time that the festival is held outside Europe.
"The Refugee Food Festival - a novel idea - mobilizes citizens, local authorities, NGOs, restaurants, refugees and UNHCR to work together to help dispel myths around refugees," said Adan Ilmi, Officer in Charge, UNHCR Regional Representation for Southern Africa.
"It also helps to facilitate their integration into the communities that welcome them and create a shared experience around the most hospitable of gestures - eating and enjoying food prepared by people from different parts of the world," Ilmi said in a statement emailed to Xinhua.
In addition to Cape Town, 13 other cities across the globe, including New York and San Francisco, will also launch the festival, scheduled for June 12-30.
This year, over 100 restaurants in these cities will open their kitchens to refugee chefs from Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and beyond, to cook unique dishes around World Refugee Day, which falls on June 20. Participating restaurants range from canteen style kitchens to world renowned Michelin-star restaurants, with food for everyone to enjoy.
This year's festival will be co-organized by the UNHCR and Food Sweet Food, a French NGO created in 2013 to promote culinary traditions from around the world.
First held in Paris in 2016, the initiative has helped to positively change public perceptions of refugees by bringing together people from all walks of life around the dinner table thanks to the universal bonds of sharing food, the UNHCR said.
Food Sweet Food founders Marine Mandrila and Louis Martin said they realized the power of food to build cultural connections after having travelled across 18 countries and shared food around the dinner tables with dozens of men and women across the world.
"Through the Refugee Food Festival they want to show how culinary experiences allow us to break down barriers and discover each other's worlds, by sharing what is both singular and universal: food," the UNHCR said.
Many chefs who participated in the festival in previous years have launched careers in the food industry in their host countries as a result of the social and professional networks that have emerged out of the festival, according to the UNHCR.