EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

Even after the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, conflicts
continued and people remained displaced. JRS had accompanied
the many Mozambican refugees in Malawi since 1987 and helped to
rebuild schools and communities in Mozambique to facilitate their
return home. Likewise, JRS lived alongside those Angolans who
had fled the war at home and found refuge in Zambia. Before the
renewal of conflict in Angola, JRS workers moved there, providing
services for a country shattered by war, in the hope that their
presence might facilitate a peaceful return home for refugees. JRS
provided assistance to Liberians torn apart by civil war, but the
team was itself forced to flee an upsurge of violence along with the
refugees. JRS workers set up operations in neighbouring Guinea
and Côte d'Ivoire during the years of exile and finally accompanied
Liberians during their return home.
The harrowing flight of more than two million refugees from
Burundi and Rwanda led to a massive expansion of JRS work in
Africa. From 1994, JRS workers joined other organisations in
Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaire, working with the survivors
of massacre and flight. The unprepared return of the Rwandan refugees
from neighbouring countries and increased insecurity forced
many programs to be closed; yet JRS has maintained a presence in
order to carry on its work quietly.
In Latin America, too, a large commitment to refugees developed
out of the civil war in El Salvador of the eighties. When the war ended
in 1992, the commitment to refugees became a commitment to the reconstruction
of the nation. JRS programs were transformed into the
Jesuit Development Service under the responsibility of the Central
American Province. JRS workers accompanied the Guatemalan refugees
in Mexico for several years. Now, in Colombia, JRS is seeking
ways to support the many people displaced by endemic violence.
In North America, many hundreds of refugees could reach
Canada and the United States thanks to JRS and Jesuit efforts to
sponsor and welcome them. Meanwhile, the work of the regional
office in the United States, which has always given great support to
JRS programs throughout the world, was also shaped by the growing
rejection of asylum seekers in the US. When Haitian refugees
were turned away, legal programs to assist them were developed. As
asylum seekers were routinely detained, programs of pastoral and
legal care for detainees began.
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