Colombia – Communiqué from JRS Regional Directors
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Regional Directors' Team met in Bogotá and Cúcuta (Colombia) from 14 to 19 November.
The regions that make up JRS globally are nine: (1) Eastern Africa, (2) Western Africa, (3) Southern Africa, (4) Europe, (5) Middle East and North Africa - MENA, (6) Asia Pacific, (7) South Asia, (8) United States and Canada, and (9) Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the end of the meeting the team shared the following communiqué:
Communiqué to the Society of Jesus
and the Apostolic Body of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS)
The JRS Senior Leadership Team (SLT), led by International Director, Fr Tomas H. Smolich SJ, and Deputy Director, Br Michael Schopf SJ, are in Bogotá, Colombia, 14-19 November 2022, including a visit to the territorial team in Cúcuta (JRS Colombia) on the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
In this time of grace, we ratify:
1. our commitment to continue offering a humane and quality service to refugees, migrants and forcibly displaced people, making the journey together with them; to this end, we strengthen our reflection and work on the relevance of linking global and local work, as a way to understand and respond appropriately to the diverse migratory flows of these people, in an integral and intersectoral way.
2. Our understanding of the variety of factors that cause forced displacement in the world (armed conflicts, misguided economic policies, climate change, armed violence, crisis of democracies, among others), which call us to broaden our vision and response to these situations in accompanying the people we serve, and in public and political advocacy.
3. We are grateful for two lessons learned from the JRS Latin America and the Caribbean region: a) The way in which its work is inserted into the common apostolic project of the Conference of Provincials (CPAL) and the Provinces of the region, working in network with other works of the Society of Jesus and the Church, as is currently the case with the Jesuit Migrant Service in Peru. b) Its articulation with the global level of JRS, especially in the design of the regional strategic framework and with the contextualised appropriation of global tools to improve the service.
4. We feel deeply invited to continue to strengthen the work of reconciliation and hospitality, taking into account the particularities of each place in the world where we carry out our mission.
With these motions, we confirm our commitment to accompany, serve and defend the people who give meaning to our mission.
Bogotá, Colombia. 19 November 2022.
Image and information from lac.jrs.net
Fuente : Jesuitas.lat
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