About Us: Jesuit Refugee Service

The mission of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA is to accompany, serve and advocate for the rights of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons, witnessing to God’s presence in vulnerable and often forgotten people driven from their homes by conflict, natural disaster, economic injustice, or violation of their human rights.

JRS/USA is one of 10 geographic regions of Jesuit Refugee Service, an international Catholic organization sponsored by the Society of Jesus.

In coordination with the JRS International Office in Rome, JRS/USA provides advocacy, financial and human resources for JRS regions throughout the world.

Learn more jrsusa.org

U.S. NGOs urge Bonn conference to focus on long-term Afghan needs

WASHINGTON (Dec 5, 2011)— International leaders meeting in Bonn on Monday to discuss the future of Afghanistan should expand their focus from short-term stabilization efforts  to longer term development work that will have a lasting impact on the country.

To date, not enough emphasis has been placed on meeting basic Afghan needs and building a solid foundation for sustainable peace, recovery and inclusive long-term development, said leading U.S.-based international NGOs on Monday.

“It is the 10th anniversary of the first Bonn conference. We hope that governments attending this meeting fully seize the opportunity to do better than they have to date. Much more needs to be done to put Afghanistan on the road to recovery, stability and sustainable development,” said Samuel A. Worthington, president and CEO of InterAction, the biggest alliance of U.S.-based international NGOs.

“Civil society organizations and ordinary Afghans should be placed at the center of these renewed efforts. Their contributions will be critical to a successful transition from war to peace, where the needs of all Afghans, including women, are taken into consideration,” added Worthington.

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA welcomes a new director

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA today welcomes Fr. Michael Evans S.J. as our new National Director… learn more here:
http://www.jrsusa.org/news_detail?TN=NEWS-20101018121057

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Visit our new website

(Washington, D.C.) Oct. 1, 2010 – After nearly 12 months of planning and work, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA is happy to announce the launch of our new website. In November 2009, JRS communications leaders from the International office, the U.S. office and the Eastern Africa office began collaborating with Omaha-based Adventure Studios to design and build the website.

This new website is designed to present information in a clear way with easy navigation, while highlighting the accompaniment, service and advocacy JRS undertakes worldwide with and on behalf of refugees and forcibly displaced people.

Pakistan in urgent need as floods displace millions of people

(UNITED NATIONS) The response from donors to a request to assist millions of people affected by floods in Pakistan is encouraging, with nearly half of the $460 million required having been received, but the contributions are far from sufficient given the magnitude of the disaster, the United Nations reported yesterday.

Some $227.8 million or 49.6 per cent of the total amount requested by UN agencies and NGO partners in the Pakistan Initial Floods Emergency Response Plan (PIFERP) has so far been received, while another $42 million has been pledged, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

“We thank donors for their generosity, and ask them to keep up this accelerated pace of donations. The road ahead remains long. We should all also be ready for any increase in requirements,” said John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“Watching this disaster unfold, the world increasingly understands its immense magnitude,” said Mr. Holmes. “I am glad that we now see a more positive response to the calls of the Secretary-General and the humanitarian community for increased and faster funding,” he added, referring to the visit by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Pakistan on Sunday.

Colombian court strikes down U.S. defense agreement

Just the Facts reports that late Tuesday,

Colombia’s Constitutional Court, part of its Supreme Court, decided by a 6-3 vote to strike down a defense cooperation agreement that Colombia’s government had signed with the United States in October 2009.

This accord, which gave U.S. military personnel the right to use seven Colombian bases for the next ten years, is suspended until Colombia’s Congress votes to approve it. Article 173 of Colombia’s Constitution requires that the country’s Senate be empowered to “permit the transit of foreign troops through the territory of the Republic.”

Politically, the court’s decision is a blow to both governments because it gives the impression – deserved or no – that the Obama and Uribe administrations sought to do something that violated Colombia’s Constitution. Operationally, however, the defense accord’s suspension will not affect the U.S. presence in Colombia. Not a single U.S. soldier or contractor will have to leave Colombia or alter what he is doing as a result of the Constitutional Court’s decision.

Read the full story here.

UN: Countries must do more to resettle refugees

With more than 800,000 refugees estimated to require resettlement in third countries in the coming years, the United Nations refugee agency is calling for countries to allow in more people – who cannot return to their home nations – to begin new lives.

At present, only a small number of countries are participating in the resettlement schemes of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the number of available resettlement places has not kept pace with increased submissions to the agency.

For this year, UNHCR predicts that 747,000 people worldwide need to move to third countries, while that number surpasses 800,000 – a record high – for 2011.

However, the annual quotas set by nations offering to resettle refugees have remained unchanged at 80,000 slots.

World Social Forum seeks translators

(Quito, Ecuador) April 22, 2010 – The World Social Forum on Migration is an event that takes part as component of the World Social Forum, and constitutes a space of democratic debate of ideas, reflection, proposal formulation, experience exchange and social movement articulation. The Forum becomes the meeting point for NGOs, networks and other civil society organizations that oppose the neoliberal scheme and back the recognition of civil, political, economical, social and cultural rights of migrants, IDPs, refugees and stateless people.

WSFM

UN registers 26,000 Colombian refugees in Ecuador

Under an innovative new program, United Nations-supported mobile teams have traversed difficult terrain in an isolated region of northern Ecuador for the past year to register 26,000 Colombian refugees.

“Registration is a vital step in the process towards being formally recognized as a refugee,” Andrej Mahecic, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters today in Geneva.

The mobile registration scheme is considered a model for Latin America, where most refugees usually have to travel to towns and cities to be registered.

Mobile teams – comprising officials from the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and UNHCR staff –reached out to people living in remote areas, shrinking the time it takes for a Government decision on asylum claims from several months to just one day.

Hurricane season approaching, Haitians need shelter

Shelter remains the biggest and most urgent priority in Haiti, two months after it was struck by a catastrophic earthquake, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday as he visited the country for the second time since the disaster and stressed that the world has not forgotten its people’s plight.

Mr. Ban met with President René Préval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and toured a camp that is home to tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) on a one-day visit to the Caribbean country ahead of the international donors’ conference for Haiti that will be held at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 31 March.

The Secretary-General told journalists in Port-au-Prince, the capital, that the situation in Haiti, where the transition from emergency relief to early recovery and reconstruction has begun, remains extremely difficult.

Estimates vary but as many as 230,000 Haitians may have been killed in the quake that struck on 12 January and much of Port-au-Prince and nearby towns was levelled. Around 1.3 million people remain homeless.