An’eth’ara! Welcome to the first Refugia Foreign Affairs Update of 2021!

I hope everyone had nice, relaxing holidays and was able to close 2020 out in peace. As we look back on the end of last year, there are a lot of regional goings-on to share.

To start, we’ll look at what’s changed in the Foreign Affairs department. The Refugia Envoy programme was introduced on October 22 with the goal of placing a Refugi in all of our embassy regions. I’ve been hoping that it would result in closer relationships and friendlier ties. As of writing this document, every embassy save two has been filled, and I hope to see the others taken care of soon.

Envoys aren’t the only thing that’s been happening in the Foreign Affairs department either. We’ve been on an embassy spree, cleaning up while also finding new friends! Since the beginning of October, we’ve re-opened our embassy with The Leftist Assembly, as well as forging new diplomatic ties with older regions like Yggdrasil and Spiritus. Diplomatic offices were also established in The Pacific. In fact, with new legislation shortening the referendum time on opening and closing embassies to four days from seven, starting new friendships is faster than ever.

Refugia has been practising our writing skills on more than just legislation. After a lot of hard work from Refuge Isle on graphics, and far too much bloviating on my part, we have the official Refugia Foreign Affairs Dispatch. It gives a little bit of the department’s history, our goals, and things to consider when approaching us about embassies. The coolest part is the list of travel runes, which are drawn by Refugi to create portals between Refugia and other places. We design each one with the embassy in mind.

Another interesting thing that has happened in the interim is the re-organisation of our founding document, the Refugia Revised Statutes. Submitted by Refuge Isle, the new layout for the RRS aims to make things easier to find and amend by grouping the various laws into categories and giving the entire document a better layout.

Finally, our regional Council is growing. A new amendment passed two weeks ago called for the establishment of a World Assembly Affairs office, complete with a brand new Council seat. The election period for our first WAA Councillor has just ended, and Junitaki-cho has taken her seat. Her term will last until the next set of elections in February.

As always, if you have any questions or issues, myself and all our Envoys are available.

Dar’eth Shi’ral
Sylh Alanor
Foreign Affairs Councillor of Refugia