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IRP hosts ecumenical meetings in Miami, co-hosts "warehousing" meeting in Geneva
Burmese refugees "warehoused" along the Thailand-Burma border.
Photo: J. Isbister
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The CWS Immigration and Refugee Program is hosting a series of ecumenical meetings on refugee resettlement and protection Sept. 7-11 in Miami, Florida.
Sept. 7-8, RED, a Latin American ecumenical network, will discuss its role in resettling Colombian refugees to Chile and other Latin American countries, and their partnership with CWS/IRP.
On Sept. 9, partners from North and South America will seek to strengthen collaboration on forced migration issues, including the impact of NAFTA and CAFTA.
Finally, the World Council of Churches' Global Ecumenical Network on Uprooted People will conduct its annual meeting Sept. 10-11, hosted by CWS.
CWS/IRP is among cosponsors of the first North-South Civil Society Conference on Refugee Warehousing, set for Sept. 25-26 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Refugees, refugee and human rights advocates, business and labor leaders, representatives of faith communities, writers and scholars, and refugee service providers will share perspectives.
Then they will work on strategies to secure the basic rights of refugees as outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, 1967 UNHCR Protocol, and Universal Declaration of Human Rights to live free, dignified, and productive lives, even as they await repatriation, integration into their host country, or resettlement in another country.
In 2003, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants launched a global anti-warehousing campaign, which carries the message that the waste of human potential caused by long-term encampment of refugees benefits no one.
Along with CWS/IRP, other co-sponsors of the warehousing conference include the Dutch Council for Refugees, Frontiers (Lebanon), Refugee Consortium of Kenya, Refugee Council USA, Thai Catholic Commission on Migration, and the World Council of Churches.
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