Queen Máxima attends Tent Partnership for Refugees dinner

On the evening of Wednesday 20 June, partly in her capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, Her Majesty Queen Máxima attended a working dinner of the Tent Partnership for Refugees at Unilever in Rotterdam. The Tent Partnership mobilises the private sector to help improve the lives of refugees.

Since it was founded in 2015, the Tent Partnership for Refugees has called on businesses to help improve the lives and livelihoods of refugees. The thinking is that companies can have the greatest impact when they treat refugees not as victims, but as economically productive workers, suppliers, entrepreneurs and customers. The partnership encourages businesses to develop tangible concrete initiatives that can also be adopted by others. These include special projects to employ refugees, to tailoring products and services to meet refugee needs, and to invest in refugee-run enterprises. Tent believes that, by focusing on their key values and responsibilities, companies can devise sustainable solutions that can also be scaled up.

The dinner was attended by directors and high-level representatives of around 15 major Dutch businesses active abroad. It was hosted by Unilever CEO Paul Polman and Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Tent.