Ljubljana has since 2011, when it joined the ICORN cities of refuge network, offered shelter to three persecuted artists.

On 8 February 2016, the Iraqi poet, writer and journalist Sameer Sayegh also found refuge in Ljubljana and expressed his thanks: “I was forced to leave my home town. I left without anything, walked, aimlessly gazed at the horizon and talked to my desperate soul: ‘You had a safe home and a life. Now everything is ruined, you are lost, homeless, there is no safe haven where you could go, nothing.’ But when I glanced at the same horizon yet again I saw a generous, blessed, wonderful and friendly country pointing at me and – as if it was beckoning me – it whispered: ‘Sameer, why worry? I am Slovenia, your new country!’ Therefore, thank you Slovenia, thank you Ljubljana!”

Sameer Sayegh writes in the Arabic and English language. He was born in 1949 in south Iraq but he spent a lot of time in the capital Musul, Nineveh, from where he had to flee years ago because of the pressure of the Islamic state.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature. He published many translations from English and a collection of poems in English titled The Wanderer.
He served his compulsory service as a translator in the Air Force, he worked as a translator for the Iraqi Red Crescent, as a simultaneous interpreter for the head of the German Red Cross in Mosul, and for experts and lecturers from Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Italy. For many years he worked as a cultural correspondent for the daily newspapers Al-Jumhuriya and Azzaman.

ICORN Network

In the year when Ljubljana was the holder of the UNESCO title World Book Capital (23 April 2010 to 23 April 2011), the City of Ljubljana and the Slovene PEN Centre agreed Ljubljana would join the network of cities of refuge for persecuted writers (ICORN – The International Cities of Refuge Network) with its Administration Centre in the city of Stavanger in Norway from where it maintains contact with chosen candidates and cities of refuge.
The ICORN network was established on the initiative of Salman Rushdie and the International Parliament of Writers (IPW) in 1994 as an international network of cities offering shelter to writers at risk because of their artistic creativity and expression of opinions.
A city of refuge enables a writer, who usually had to flee from his country, to avoid imprisonment or even worse measures, to create a new social network in his new environment, to maybe find employment or other means of supporting himself and provide him with suitable working conditions in times which are especially immediately after fleeing from his country most difficult.
The ICORN network includes over 50 cities from around the world. The detailed list of cities, guest authors and other information about the network can be found at the website www.icorn.org/cities.php.