7,000 runners will participate in the Night of the Refugee on Saturday

This year, the interest in the Night of the Refugees is so great that no more people can participate. The organizers of the popular walks had hoped for 6,000 participants, but 7,000 people had registered. As a result, the routes are full, said the Refugee Foundation.

Thousands of people will walk 10, 20, or 40 kilometers in five cities on Saturday from 6 p.m. They will raise money for emergency aid for people fleeing war and violence.

The 40-kilometer walking tours take a night route between two cities, and the shorter tours start and end in the same place. Starting locations are Amersfoort, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Tilburg, and Haarlem. The longest routes end in Utrecht, Arnhem, The Hague, Den Bosch and Amsterdam.

Participants are sponsored to contribute to emergency aid for refugees worldwide. Over one million euros had already been raised last week, and some participants managed to raise thousands of euros.

The money raised in this fifteenth edition is mainly intended for the Yazidi community in Iraq and for refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Afghanistan, and Chad.

According to the organization, it has been ten years since ISIS fighters attacked the Yazidi community in Iraq, where many people were killed, raped, or kidnapped. As a result, about 450,000 people living in the Sinjar area had to flee. To this day, only half of the people have been able to return home. It is still unsafe, houses are in ruins, and there is a great shortage of facilities.

People in the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing similar situations, as the rebel group M23 has brutally conquered more and more territory in eastern DRC in recent months. In the past five months alone, more than 600,000 people have fled the area, the organizers explain.