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 Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People

People on the Move

N° 96, December 2004

 

ICMC'S INTER-RELIGIOUS AND 

MULTI-CULTURAL PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 

IN SERVING REFUGEES

 

Prof. Stefano ZAMAGNI

President

International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC)

  

To be a refugee is a spiritual condition. When one is rejected, driven from home, has lost family, social identity, possessions, future, even perhaps a limb, it means a great deal that other persons come from outside and stay in the camps. We come to listen, to foster initiatives, to promote organizations - in short, to offer a source of hope (Mark Raper, SJ Provincial Superior, Society of Jesuits, Australia).

The Final Document of the Fifth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees devotes a section to the importance of dialogue between cultures and religions. It states that the great diversification of origins in migration flows has placed ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue at the center of the care for migrants and refugees, making these dialogues not an option, but an obligation inherent in the Church's mission in migration.

This paper is framed from the perspective of ICMC's mandate and area of expertise as an active operational agent of Catholic Social Teachings created by the Catholic Church to serve refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons. It describes our experience in working with refugees who, in their vast majority, are non-Christians.

Work with refugees is grounded in the Catholic Social Teachings that guide us to give priority to the poor and marginalized and recognize the inherent dignity of each individual. We focus on protecting and promoting durable solutions for the most vulnerable refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants, including trafficked persons. We carry out this work through advocacy at the international level, the provision of training and technical assistance to Catholic agencies serving these population groups, and, when appropriate, through the direct implementation of programmes. Specific programme interventions that foster tolerance, respect and interaction amongst persons of different faiths are annexed to this paper.

Complementary to this direct operational work, we advocate for a rights-based approach to refugees and migrants and for the ratification and implementation of the existing international legal framework for the various categories of migrants. In order to do so, over the past three years, we have consolidated our international advocacy activities. We strive to better inform our staff, members and partners, raise awareness and influence policy makers in key international and regional inter-governmental bodies, as well as donor agencies and governments on the need to combat discrimination, including discrimination on religious grounds.

Refugees and Religion

Persecution on religious grounds is included in the definition provided by the Refugee Convention. According to Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who:

“… owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

According to international human rights norms and standards, religion includes but is not limited to:

- freedom to hold a belief system of one's choice or not to hold a particular belief system;

- freedom to practice a religion of one's choice or not to practice a prescribed religion; and 

- freedom to practice a religion in the manner of one's choice.

Further, the United Nations Charter, the seven main human rights treaties adopted by the United Nations, as well as the founding document that served as a matrix for those, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted in 1948 contain consistent and respective non‑discrimination clauses, which all include religion in their grounds.[1] Articles 18 of the UDHR and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights proclaim that:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. 

Persecution for “reasons of religion” may assume various forms, e.g. prohibition of membership of a religious community, of worship in private or in public, of religious instruction, or serious measures of discrimination imposed on persons because they practice their religion or belong to a particular religious community.[2]

The intersection between the persons we serve and religion, therefore, is a strong one and a challenge we face on a daily basis.

Working with refugees of other faiths

Today there are some 30 major significant conflicts in the world (those including over 1000 casualties, both military and civilians). Most of these, for years, have been intrastate conflicts. The majority of conflicts are raging in countries where Catholics and other Christians are minorities. The majority of refugees and members of their families we have been assisting, either in the emergency phases or in seeking durable solutions in the past years, have been Muslims, including persons from Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Middle East and Indonesia. When working in predominantly Islamic countries we have included followers of the Muslim faith in our local staff, including in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey.

Existing research indicates that being a refugee - the suffering in wartime; loss of home, culture, identity; and the challenges (and sometimes failures) of life in the new country - is for many a spiritual crisis of unparalleled severity. Most or all the basic spiritual needs (hope, meaning, relatedness, forgiveness or acceptance, and transcendence) are threatened and often unmet in the refugee process.

 Â“Like other refugee groups, Muslim refugees struggle with problems related to housing, income, education, health, and security. They face the challenges of reestablishing their families in a country with traditions and lifestyles that are very different and may sometimes seem at odds with their beliefs: learning about and obtaining access to education, health, and social services for themselves and their children; protecting themselves and their children from becoming victims of prejudice and hostility; managing conflicts within their own households that arise from changing cultures, lifestyles, and family roles; and learning to take advantage of the opportunities available to them in their new home.”

Cultural Orientation Website http://www.culturalorientation.net/

In seeking to better assist and protect refugees, we adopt an attitude of respect for their own beliefs. In programming, many non-governmental organisations as well as UNHCR consult refugees and facilitate the provision of adequate services which may include places of worship in camps for them to engage in their respective spiritual and religious practices. Refugee committees inside camps and in other situations also can be provided with space and facilities for them to be able to transmit their values to their children growing up in exile.

An area of refugee work where contact with other religions is also a prominent feature is the delivery of cultural orientation classes to refugees, prior to their travel to countries that have accepted to resettle them. ICMC staff routinely conducts classes in Bosnia, Croatia, Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, and Turkey. In recent years, the vast majority of refugees we have resettled from Turkey have included Iranian Baha’is. Other groups represented include Bosnians, Kosovars, Iraqis, Iranian Kurds, Afghans, Uzbeks, Somalis, Ehtiopians, Nigerians and Azeris.

ICMC has developed one, two and three day cultural orientation programmes to accommodate different programme needs. In addition, the training team has created new materials for illiterate adults, in particular, large visual aids. This year a new “separate gender” health component was added to each class. This module includes information on domestic violence, child abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. The separate sections are tailored specifically to the needs of the men or women in the class; for example, the women’s section includes women-specific health issues. We deepened and expanded the “cultural values” component of the programme and this proved to be the most popular aspect of the programme. The cultural values component provides a cornerstone for the overall orientation programme.

Religious and ethnic intolerance, racism and xenophobia are often root and/or important contributing factors to the displacement of people. ICMC Secretariat and country level staff develop and implement specific programmes to address these factors.

A. Specific programme interventions that ICMC executes to further promote tolerance and understanding, thereby allowing for the return of the forcibly displaced, include:

- In East Timor, ICMC managed an 18-month project entitled, “Women as Agents of  Tolerance and Peace”, which trained 20 women as community tolerance trainers who implemented tolerance-promotion workshops in over 30 communities and which enhanced women’s roles in the post-conflict, peace-building process.

- In Indonesia, ICMC has been managing numerous projects focused on the internally displaced communities in the Maluku islands, where inter-religious conflict and violence has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and break down of trust between Catholic and Muslim community members. The projects aim to foster dialogue between displaced communities and community members remaining in their communities of origin, inter-religious community meetings to re-establish communication and rebuild trust, supervised go and see return visits, conducting policy dialogues with provincial government ministries and civil society leaders, and the creation of action plans with each community to address barriers to community recovery that will result in safe, sustainable returns of the displaced families and individuals. ICMC also hosted an “Interfaith Peace-Building Institute for Maluku” in September of 2003. Forty participants attended the four-day event, including 30 religious and community leaders from conflict-affected villages and 10 representatives from institutions. Participants at the Institute explored many topics of mutual concern, including traditional and religious resources for recovery and community approaches to peace and reconstruction. The participants found dialogue to be a new and empowering form of communication, and they expressed a clear desire to continue dialogue within and between their communities. Meanwhile, in the war-torn province of Aceh, ICMC has been working with human rights groups and civil society leaders to promote their skills at impartial documentation of human rights abuses, conducting human rights investigations, and training in international humanitarian law. With the government of Indonesia, ICMC has facilitated trainings on the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and has, with Oxfam, translated the Guiding Principles into Bahasa Indonesia. Additionally, in Jakarta, ICMC has been working with affected families and survivors from the Marriott Hotel bombing - assisting them to build coping skills and identify symptoms, which may indicate the need for professional therapeutic assistance.

- Previously in Congo-Brazzaville, ICMC implemented a skills training and in-kind grant programme for 10,000 demobilized combatants to assist them in making the transition from conflict to peace and provide them with alternative sources of livelihood.

- In Afghanistan, ICMC implements skills training programmes and in-kind grants of start-up materials and equipment throughout refugee return impacted communities in western Afghanistan, targeting both returning refugees and vulnerable host community members in order to promote the acceptance of returnees-many of whom spent the years of conflict outside the country and hence were resented by community members who never left and felt that returnees were privileged and were receiving more support and services than those who stayed behind.

- In Albania, ICMC works with disadvantaged and discriminated-against squatter communities and has mobilized these communities, drawn them into local political processes, and gained access for them to local services-thereby providing them with additional opportunities and greater acceptance by neighbouring communities.

- In Turkey, ICMC has undertaken a police-training project aimed at sensitizing police to the mental health of refugees, who are often arrested and mistreated by authorities.

- In Pakistan, ICMC operates three Refugee Advice and Legal Assistance Centers, which assist Afghan refugees in Pakistan in understanding their rights, assists them in accessing services, and provides pro bono legal assistance when they are in detention and facing deportation. The Centers also work with local authorities and police and help sensitize them to the special needs and concerns of the refugee population.

- Building tolerance in multi-ethnic communities in Kosovo[3] through multi-ethnic, multi-religious tolerance training workshops with teachers, youth, community leaders, police, parents and politicians. We bring these groups together in a safe environment where they can discuss their fears and hopes and learn about creating a climate of tolerance and peace in their local communities. The workshops are followed by community tolerance promotion projects wherein ICMC gives grants to communities for reconstruction or local activities that provide needed services to all community members such as the building of community centers and the establishment of youth groups who educate other youth about tolerance. Over 50 communities in Kosovo have participated in the Tools for Tolerance Programme to date.

- At the EU briefing in Brussels, the UNHCR Spokesperson, when giving an update on Kosovo, said; “UNHCR would like to make a positive remark about ICMC’s Tolerance Building Youth Programme in Orahovac/Rahovac, where youth volunteers from Serb and Albanian communities work together on a project of clearing burned houses on the border of the two communities in order to create a better environment. Only one year ago such initiatives and examples of cooperation between the two ethnic communities would not have been heard of.”

- On two occasions OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) asked the Tolerance Building Programme to use its workshop as a way to settle disputes between ethnic groups in different communities over water use. They also asked the programme to work with a group of 16 different families of different ethnicities to help settle a disagreement among them. More recently OSCE asked the programme to work in the Serbian city of Strepce, where at least one Serbian NGO has expressed a desire to open a dialogue with Albanians. OSCE has asked the programme to open an office there.

- The Belgium Red Cross asked the programme to help with a dispute between 16 families in the village of Recani and the ambulante.

- The International Organization on Migration asked the programme to involve itself in a dispute over the provision of electric power to a Roma community.

- UNHCR asked that the programme to provide a workshop for its staff and local NGOs. (The programme has done similar work with other international agencies.)

- The village leaders of one community asked for help resolving a dispute over the denial of the Roma in the community to bury their dead in a local cemetery.

- The Roma in an enclave asked the programme to assist them in opening a dialogue with Albanians in the larger community.

- Community leaders in Dragash asked for the programme to continue working with the different ethnic groups in the village that was experiencing a wave of bombings at the time. Also in Dragash, the Department of Education requested a workshop for teachers.

- Balkan Sunflower - an international NGO working in the region - asked to have its staff trained to run workshops as did Caritas Kosovo.

- Police commanders in four cities invited the programme to do workshops in order to improve relations between the police and minority communities.

- An agricultural association that had international support because of its inability to work with minorities asked for assistance and this led to an effort among eight different villages to develop a plan to share the limited resources in the different communities.

- Additionally, ICMC's Training Unit provides tolerance training of trainers to local and national Catholic partner organizations around the world in order to help them replicate such trainings with their own staff and communities and develop programmes that build tolerance in their local communities.

B. ICMC advocacy initiatives relating to raise awareness on and combat discrimination and intolerance:

ICMC participated actively in the preparatory process to and in the World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2002. We recognize racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance as one of the compelling root causes of forced displacement. Furthermore, forcibly displaced persons are increasingly the object of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance in all regions of the world in places where they have sought refuge and hoped to have a new life in safety and in dignity. The Conference Programme of Action is a landmark document including more than forty concrete recommendations to counter racism and better protect uprooted people from discriminatory practices. Throughout the process we updated our members and partners and sought their input. We issued a report with recommendations to church, civil society, and governments on implementation of the results of the Conference.[4]

We are an active member of the Global Campaign for the ratification of the UN Convention on Migrant Workers and sit in the Steering Committee for the Campaign. As such we participate in panel discussions to raise awareness on the Convention and have produced documents unpacking the content of this treaty.[5]

Included in the global campaign for this Convention is the World Council of Churches, with whom we collaborate actively on a range of refugee and migration related advocacy issues. The Middle East Council of Churches and Arab organisations of human rights are using and translating some of ICMC’s background and research documents on the rights of migrants and the Convention.

We work hand in hand with a group of Christian NGOs in Brussels, including Caritas Europa, COMECE (the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community), the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe, the Jesuit Refugee Service and the Quaker Council for European Affairs providing input into the EU harmonization process for asylum and migration.

At the European Committee on Migration of the Council of Europe, we often work jointly with the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME), an organisation of Protestant and Orthodox churches and ecumenical councils throughout Europe. We are also participating in the organisation of a conference on resettlement this spring, to give insights to church related groups about resettlement as the European Union explores the possibility of developing such programmes.

Together with the Jesuit Refugee Service, ICMC submitted a statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights at its 2003 session urging it to pay more attention to the fulfillment of human rights of refugees. In particular JRS/ICMC sought to harness the existing human rights mechanisms for better protection of refugees in camp situations as well as of asylum-seekers. Both organisations recommended that special procedures, such as the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, to health and to housing, pay greater attention to forced migrants. ICMC also is making a speech on the entry into force of the Convention on Migrant Workers, calling on richer countries to ratify it. ICMC insisted that the Convention, at present ratified by mostly developing countries, is not to be feared, and that it mostly lifts out provisions in the six main existing human rights conventions adopted by the United Nations since it was created.

For the 2004 session of the Commission, ICMC and JRS again submitted a written statement, focusing on issues of detention of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, and on the conditions for voluntary returns in safety and dignity for rejected asylum seekers and returns for irregular migrants. This is available from ICMC’s website (www.icmc.net).

 ICMC is, by action, very much engaged in tolerance building across ethnic, religious and cultural divides. The Gospel, Catholic Social Teachings and the beatitudes provide the secretariat and staff around the world motivation to seek a peaceful, unified world.

 

[1] With the exception of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which focuses on race, descent, or national or ethnic origin.

[2] Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status - under the1951Convention and the1967Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, UNHCR, Geneva, January1992.

[3] At the time of writing, very sadly, inter-ethnic violence is suddenly flaring up again.

[4] See ICMC report on the WCAR: www.icmc.net/docs/en/programmes/advocfront

[5] See International Campaign Website: www.migrantsrights.org

 

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