When it comes to refugees, we speak about data, statistics, immigration, even terrorism, but never about humans. Medias are one of the major responsible of this phenomenon.

The best way to turn things around was to use one of these medias in an unexpected way to catch people’s attention and switch their perception on this issue.

On March 7th we decided to give them the whole paper for 1 day. An entire Liberation issue was written by 21 refugees from an array of origins with one challenge: explain beyond today’s news how they see France. A paper by the refugees but not on refugees.

During 1 month, a team of 21 refugees from 10 origins was created with the help of 5 associations helping refugees.

The following month, this team was split within different groups of work (representing the themes of the newspaper such as presidential elections, international, economy, sports, culture, ideas, society …) to find current topics and write their articles.

3 of them even interviewed the French President François Hollande at the Elysee Palace, and the main candidate Emmanuel Macron.

On March 6th, the whole team came to Liberation to write on fresh news and finalized every single page of the newspaper.

The day after 100k papers are printed. It was distributed all over France in kiosks, press shops, bars, AF planes, to the 30K subscribers, and in more than 25 countries. A digital version sold online is seen by 4M French people every day.

- 21 refugees of 10 nationalities

- +35% of sales on this specific edition compared to usual days.

- 100k papers were printed and the digital edition was seen 4 million times

- Almost every major French medias (TV, Radio, Press) covered the news and interviewed authors

- International media supported the initiative (AJ+, Skynews etc.)

- The French President François Hollande tweeted and posted about it

- 3 refugees were invited to meet him at Elysee

- On Twitter #LibéDesRéfugiés was seen by 165 million people