wfn.org | WCC provides safe place for stories of uprooted people

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

The Episcopal Church
http://www.dfms.org/contents.html
Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>

98-2275
by Richard Parkins

(ENS) Over forty "padares" or meeting places provided 
opportunities for the issue of forcibly displaced people to be 
examined. Church groups from India, the Middle East, Great 
Britain, Belguim, Canada, the United States, Hungary, Uruguay, 
Switzerland, Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe relayed accounts 
of extending hospitality to refugees, sometimes in the face of 
restrictive and even hostile governments who were more likely to 
close doors than extend the welcome to newcomers in their midst or 
as a supplement to the work of more generous governments whose 
scant resources could not allow them to do more.   
	The Interchurch Committee for Refugees in Canada reported 
cases advanced by church groups and other immigrant rights 
organizations where the courts become the vehicle for redressing 
punitive government practices which would have separated families 
or summarily deported persons without a chance for a full hearing. 
The ecumenical efforts of Canadian churches have focused on 
establishing precedents which would undo the harsher laws now 
impacting asylum seekers in Canada. 
	An Anglican Tamil leader told of desperate efforts to press 
churches into solidarity with a growing Tamil community seeking 
safety in Britain where their plight is compounded by increasing 
governmental reluctance to provide transitional aid to newcomers 
who need time to secure employment and "settle in."   
	Several Tamil described in moving detail how their efforts 
to mobilize thousands of Tamil refugees in South India had 
produced remarkable self-help programs which had resulted in a 
relatively self-sufficient Tamil community in a country whose 
government had not officially welcomed them and had, in fact, 
denied them the assistance that would have ordinarily been theirs 
through the intervention of the United Nations High Commission for 
Refugees (UNHCR). Since India does not formally recognize the 
UNHCR, Tamil refugees are assisted only to the extent that 
churches and other humanitarian organizations step in. This church 
group is helping to fill the void for a refugee community that has 
for years been struggling for identity and sustenance. 
	Friends from All Saints Cathedral (Cairo) offered moving 
accounts of their ministry to displaced Sudanese whose limbo 
status in Egypt has been a long and painful saga. All Saints has 
been one of the few centers of aid for Sudanese who for years have 
awaited either resettlement or repatriation. 
	An important lesson emerging from several of the accounts 
was the extent to which countries which are struggling with their 
own poverty have graciously received their uprooted neighbors. The 
churches in southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe, have been 
among the most generous and creative in giving solace to fleeing 
neighbors. Churches in Uruguay have undertaken important 
initiatives in reaching out to the growing number of internally 
displaced persons in Latin America-again a response to a situation 
for which there is no formal international response since the 
mandate of the UNHCR does not extend to the internally displaced. 
	In all these instances, people of faith have often been the 
sole source of assistance and advocacy for those who are clearly 
among our most vulnerable and marginalized neighbors. This 
assistance is often rendered by groups who have meager resources 
with which to fill the void that governments and international 
agencies have allowed to exist. The church groups making 
presentations at Harare were taking care not only of their own but 
giving hospitality as widely as they could possibly stretch.  The 
accounts at Harare were modern versions of the parable of the Good 
Samaritan - accepting uncritically those in need as neighbors and 
rendering whatever  hospitality they could muster. 
	The plethora of stories told in the padares reflects the 
universality of the crisis of uprooted persons and the fervor of 
refugees and their caregivers in pleading for the moral and 
material support needed from faith communities.  Their presence at 
the WCC assembly was an attempt to give witness to their tragedy 
and to widen the network of witnesses and advocates.  Harare was a 
safe arena where pleas to brothers and sisters could be made  and 
where, therefore, virtually invisible crises made visible.  
	The stories of forcibly displaced persons occurred against a 
backdrop of hearings, discussions, and formal statements about the 
ill effects of economic globalization and the international debt 
crisis.  Included also was attention to the end of the Decade of 
Women and future work needed to bring justice and equality to the 
women of the world.  Refugees were acknowledged as the victims of 
forces precipitated  by the poverty and economic and political 
fragility of systems wrecked by oppressive debt repayment 
obligations and the globalization of financial systems which are 
often insensitive to the human consequences of their global 
maneuvering.  Moreover, as women and children are the largest 
segment of the refugee population, and certainly the most 
vulnerable, the examination in one padare of the violence and 
trauma facing refugee women was a poignant sequel to earlier 
discussions about the victimization of women in so many parts of 
the world.  
		The U.S. churches effectively brought home some of the 
critical issues facing churches as they are called to speak more 
fervently on behalf of displaced persons.  A session on the "hard 
questions" facing those working with refugees generated serious 
comment about the seeming persistence and proliferation of refugee 
crises and the need to address root causes rather than just the 
aftermath of internal violence which produces "the forcibly 
displaced." 
Another U.S. sponsored session dramatized the various 
reasons often expressed for churches and church people not 
responding fully to these crises, giving attention to all of the 
excuses for stepping aside as the forcible displacement of persons 
looms as one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of the next 
millenium.
	While little was offered through resolutions to underscore 
specific refugee situations, with the exception of attention to 
the ongoing tragedy of southern Sudanese, the plight of the 
uprooted was an issue interwoven with the broad measures adopted 
by the WCC as it contemplated its mission for the future.  Some 
came to the Assembly hoping to secure support for their specific 
refugee crisis and were disappointed not to have their tragedy 
formally acknowledged.  It is inevitable, however, that the many 
conversations that took place at Harare will be the catalyst for a 
stronger and clearer role for churches in lifting up the despair 
of refugees and their inextricable relationship to the broader 
themes of globalization and debt relief - themes that will surely 
occupy the WCC in the years ahead.  

--Richard Parkins is director of Episcopal Migration Ministries 
for the Episcopal Church.