Faith-based organisations (FBOs) have historically provided a variety of services to refugees and asylum seekers, regardless of individuals’ religious or spiritual affiliation, and this assistance may be indistinguishable from that provided by secular counterparts. However, FBOs are guided by their…
The official Protestant church in Morocco, the Église Évangélique au Maroc, EEAM, has churches in several cities in Morocco. After a post-independence decline, in the 1990s the EEAM churches experienced an enormous increase in membership from the arrival of students…
The resumption of armed conflict in 2011 in the north of Myanmar led to tens of thousands of people being displaced; three years on, over 99,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain. In this predominately Christian area of Myanmar, Baptist and…
The issue of faith-based organisations (FBOs) and their responses to displacement is highly relevant in Bangkok where the number of urban refugees is now estimated to be over 8,000 (more than five times the number in Bangkok in early 2013)…
Those working with asylum seekers and refugees in Turkey have noticed that a growing number of Iranian Shi’ite asylum seekers are converting to Christianity during their migratory passage through Turkey. With apostasy punishable by death in Iran, asylum claims and…
Humanitarian agencies who have signed up to the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief have committed themselves not to use humanitarian response to further political or religious creeds.[1] However,…
Founded in 1881 originally to assist Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, HIAS[1] was formed to provide meals, transportation and jobs for the new arrivals to Manhattan. The Old Testament and the Talmud are the pillars on which…
Since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising in Burma, ethnic Chin refugees have fled to India’s Mizoram state, which borders Burma’s western Chin state. Because of the remote location and government-imposed restrictions on foreigners’ travel to Mizoram state, the Chins in Mizoram…
The rhetoric concerning protection of internally displaced people (IDPs) often focuses on top-down, international and/or state-led protection mechanisms. The 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and other more recent documents such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s 2010 Framework on Durable…
Through an ecumenical organisation called OeSA,[1] the Reformed, Catholic and Methodist Churches in Basel offer humanitarian assistance to refugees who have just reached Switzerland after difficult and dangerous experiences. OeSA provides socio-pastoral assistance for asylum seekers in the period they…