On World Refugee Day, June 20, Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Cambodia has issued a statement echoing Pope Francis’ appeal for a shared response to the global refugee situation.

JRS Cambodia Director Sr Denise Coghlan RSM with a newborn refugee baby

“With more than 68 million people displaced worldwide, the call of Pope Francis to a shared response to welcome, protect, promote and integrate refugees and migrants is urgent,” said JRS Cambodia.

“World Refugee Day is a day that evokes our humanity and our compassion.  It calls on our wisdom.  So, in Cambodia we urge further action for documentation and path to citizenship for refugees and stateless people, for speedy access to just refugee status determination for asylum seekers, protection for migrant workers and the cessation of abusive trafficking,” the organisation said in its statement.

JRS Cambodia also “salute[d] the strength, courage and resilience of refugees around the globe” and noted “the horrors asylum seekers experience in 2018”, listing as examples the war and bombings in Syria and Yemen, the religious and ethnic persecution of the Rohingya, the capture and separation of children by the US on the Mexican border, the holding of refugees offshore and stopping services in Australia, and the extreme poverty and starvation in parts of Africa.

It also highlighted instances of ordinary people sharing their resources as the Holy Father has called for.  Among these are refugees educating one another in Lebanon, Chad, South Sudan and the Central African Republic; resettled Rohingya refugees advocating for those in the swamps of Bangladesh; ordinary families in France and other places offering hospitality in Cambodia; refugees injured in the Thai Camps in the eighties travelling miles to help other people with disability in remote parts of Cambodia 35 years later; and a Buddhist social worker in Cambodia helping a Pakistani Muslim mother to give birth.

Click here to read JRS Cambodia’s statement for World Refugee Day 2018.