[1] It was founded in 1994 as The Voice Africa Forum by four refugees in a detention centre in Muhlhausen, Germany in order to aid resistance to the military dictatorship in Nigeria.
[2] The group is credited with giving "rise in the 1990s to a wave of German based self-organised groups of non-status migrants"[3] The Voice was active in the self-organised refugee fight since 1997 to close the notorious refugee detention centres Tambach-Dietharz and Jena Forst a former Soviet Army barracks in Jena Forest in Thuringia.
[5] The groups are all refugee-lead and self-organised with an emphasis on fighting deportation and detention throughout the world.
Here he gave a first hand account of a boat journey across the mediterranean and subsequent experiences in Italy, France and Germany concerning the problems refugees experienced being excluded from paid work.
[8] The Voice Refugee Forum participated with Ascan Breuer, Ursula Hansbauer and Wolfgang Konrad in making the film Forst in 2005.