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No. 37 – March 2006
Servir
Food – fundamental
to refugee protection
In this issue:
accounts from Germany, Colombia,
Thailand, Tanzania, Sudan and Namibia.
Jesuit Refugee Service
SERVIR No. 37 – March 2006 1

EDITORIAL
Self-reliance, yes!
But not through food cuts
Lluís Magriñà SJ
Breakdowns in food supply oblige
forced migrants to make choices
which have a negative impact
their lives. This Servir examines the
issue of food security for refugees and
other forced migrants. In many cases,
difficulties accessing food are institutional.
States and the international community
in general have abandoned them
to fend for themselves, without giving
them the right to farm land or to work.
JRS runs projects and advocacy campaigns
that mitigate the effects of these
policies; but it’s not enough when the
focus of beneficiaries is their survival.
Refugee kitchen, Venezuelan-Colombian
Mr Keßler describes the situation of Ali,
caught in a dispute between two states.
He is unable to obtain food and shelter
without a residence permit. To receive
one, he must have a travel document,
which was denied to him without a residence
permit. This is not simply a bureaucratic
mistake. Germany, like other
industrialised states, is adopting new policies
to deter refugees from coming and
is using lack of access to sufficient food
as part of this deterrence policy.
Mr Bustillo explains how if it were not
for the assistance provided by friends,
family and organisations like JRS, survival
for many internally displaced persons
(IDPs) in Colombia would be in
question. The situation is complex. The
Colombian government is charged with
protecting IDPs but is also responsible
for causing their displacement, for denying
them sufficient support while displaced
and for encouraging their return
to unsafe areas.
Ms den Otter examines recent changes
in UNHCR, the UN refugee agency,
policy towards refugees in Thailand.
The agency promotes refugee self-re-
liance, but the Thai government does
not permit refugees to work. UNHCR
is facing cuts to its budget, and has cut
the assistance provided to refugees.
The fortunate find work in the informal
labour market where they risk government
sanctions and exploitation at
the hands of unscrupulous employers.
Others, in particular children, survive
as best they can.
In Tanzania, Ms Le highlights the contradictions
in national and international
policy towards refugees. The Burundian
refugees she describes depend
almost entirely on the UN World Food
Programme for survival. Insufficient
rations force them to work illegally. After
12 years, they have had enough and
some are prepared to risk life at home.
Of course rations should be increased
but, more than that, they should be allowed
to work and contribute to the
development of the local economy.
The consequences of inaction are
clearly illustrated by Ms Kerrigan and
Sr Whitaker. It is the most vulnerable
who pay. Food insecurity prevents children
from going to school. They are
forced to work to support the family.
Those at school are often unable to
concentrate and learn more slowly.
These are only a few examples of the
terrible effects that policies, deliberate
or not, have on forcibly displaced persons
the world over. Food shortages
can be the cause of family breakdown
and malnutrition, particularly for children
whose physical and psychological
development can be seriously affected.
This is why we pray in the Our
Father: Give us this day our daily bread.
Lluís Magriñà SJ, JRS
International Director
2

Hunger and homelessness
regulated by law
GERMANY
Stefan Keßler
According to the latest UN Human Development Report,
Germany is one of the richest countries in the
world. Despite this, many people are hungry and
homeless. For some, food and shelter are denied by law.
One such person is Ali Mansour (not his real name). In the
summer of 2003, the 23-year old Palestinian refugee came
to Germany from Lebanon. In Berlin, he applied for residency,
but his request was denied. Nevertheless, he could
not be deported because he could not acquire proper documentation.
The Lebanese authorities usually refuse to issue
travel documents, essential for deportation, to Palestinians
not in possession of a German residence permit.
The official name given to Ali’s status is Duldung, or tolerated.
As stated in the report by the Independent Commission
on Immigration, established by the German Federal Minister
of the Interior and headed by a former President of the German
Federal Parliament, Prof. Dr. Rita Sueßmuth: the
“Duldung is not a residence permit but a temporary suspension
of deportation... Hence, it does not constitute a legal stay
but exempts the illegal stay from being a criminal offence”.
Fortunately, the Berlin regional government has promised
to issue a new decree which would allow persons like Ali
to receive at least food and shelter. However, it cannot be
certain that the promised decree will offer tolerated persons
sufficient food and shelter or that it will provide other
necessities such as clothing and medical assistance.
Ali’s fate is far from exceptional. JRS Germany deals with
many cases where individuals fleeing human rights abuses,
receive reduced support or, as in Ali Mansour’s case, nothing
but homelessness and hunger regulated by the law.
Stefan Keßler,
Legal Officer, JRS Germany
Low-cost supermarket, Germany
When Ali applied for residency in 2003, he had no money
and was refused a residence permit and consequently the
right to undertake employment. The immigration office told
Ali he needed a Lebanese passport in order to receive food
and shelter until his deportation. The Lebanese embassy
told him because he was Palestinian, he could not receive a
passport unless he had a German residence permit.
Without a residence permit, he was denied a passport, and
without a passport the social security department refused
to give him financial or any other form of support. Without
his friends who provided shelter and shared what little they
had with him, Ali Mansour would be living on the streets.
JRS Germany assisted Ali to contest the decision to deny
him basic assistance, but the court upheld the refusal. The
relevant provisions are found in the German asylum seekers’
social benefits act (Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz). The
act also regulates social benefits to ‘tolerated’ non-nationals.
According to the act, certain groups of non-nationals
should receive 20 percent less than what is normally paid to
Germans. In addition, article 1a of the act allows this assistance
to be reduced to a minimum of what is absolutely
necessary to survive.
SERVIR No. 37 – March 2006
3

COLOMBIA
Colombian
refugee,
Venezuela
Juan Manuel Bustillo
Forced home
but not protected
When the local population is not
being attacked by armed groups
or by the army, it is being harmed
by the government trying to spray the coca
plants with poisonous acid. In response,
many flee to what they consider safer areas.
In the last three years alone, more than
three million people, as much as 5 percent
of Colombia’s population, have been forcibly
displaced because of the country’s armed
conflict. More than half of all displaced persons
are children under the age of eighteen.
While Colombia is among a handful of countries
that has enacted legislation to protect
internally displaced persons (IDPs); nonetheless,
they are often not provided with
food assistance. In 2003, nearly a quarter
of displaced children were at risk of malnutrition,
those between the ages of one and
two years being the most affected.
Governmental assistance, when granted, is
limited and only granted to those officially
registered as displaced. The process of registering
and requesting humanitarian assistance
takes many months. Assistance is
normally provided for three months up to a
maximum of six. After the three month
period ends, most IDPs do not receive any
further humanitarian assistance.
Unable to get by, IDPs often feel forced to
return home due to a lack of other options.
The state assistance they receive when they
return is better than what they receive as
IDPs, but is still inadequate. Food support is
only provided for a maximum of 60 days. Each
family also receives approximately 157 USD
per month, which is not sufficient to pay for
food until the end of the harvesting season.
Returning home also means returning to
unsafe areas where daily life is threatened
by fighting, and coca plant spraying. Because
return is seen as the only valid option,
integration into safer areas is effectively
discouraged. Despite the danger, the
Colombian government’s National Development
Plan 2002-2006 seeks to persuade
30,000 displaced families to return to their
home areas. Government guidelines indicate
the social and economic costs of displacement
are reduced the quicker the decision
to return home is made.
Once home, many people find their freedom
of movement restricted. In effect, prevents
them from accessing food and healthcare.
It also jeopardises their safety. In 2004, at
least 70 villages throughout the country were
threatened by the practices of the paramilitary
and insurgent groups. However, state
4

security forces have also been accused of
restricting the movement of the inhabitants
of towns and villages throughout Colombia,
allegedly to prevent them from assisting
paramilitary and insurgent groups.
As a result of fighting between paramilitary,
insurgent and military groups, on 1 May,
42 families from Cerro Azul in northern
Colombia were forcibly displaced. An 18-
month old baby girl was killed and her father
wounded during the clash. Residents
fled. Shortly afterwards they were encouraged
to return to Cerro Azul with the promise
of state support for three months, however,
only one food assistance package was
provided to each returnee family.
On 20 August, the Colombian government
decided to spray the coca fields with glyphosate,
a poisonous acid. It burns and dries
everything it comes in contact with. One
coca field located near a school was sprayed
by light aircraft. The wind carried the glyphosate
towards the school, burning the skin
of several children. The school’s garden
plants were also burned. Since they are
afraid of being attacked by paramilitary
groups, the pilots are not careful about
where they spray. At times, they do not
even spray the coca plants. Instead, they
spray houses, people and animals.
Consequently, the subsistence crops in the
area were badly damaged. Food shortages
and economic hardship followed. Failure by
the authorities to provide food and support
to the local population caused further displacement.
With this knowledge in hand, the Colombian
government has repeatedly failed to
take action. In 2004, UNHCR, the UN
refugee agency, urged the Colombian government
not to make humanitarian assistance
subject to budgetary availability and
to allocate the necessary resources to prevent
forced displacement. In the same year,
Colombia’s Constitutional Court held that
the government’s system for assisting displaced
persons was unconstitutional. It declared
the state had an obligation to provide
humanitarian assistance to those IDPs not
in a position to sustain themselves. In September
2005, the Court found the steps
taken by the government to comply with its
ruling were insufficient in terms of both resources
and institutional will.
Nevertheless, the process of assisting IDPs
continues to be overly bureaucratic, lack
transparency and ignore persons awaiting
official registration. It is evident that the decision
to return is not voluntary. Displaced
persons lack information regarding the security
situation in their home areas. They presume
the government will provide socio-economic
support for their long-term security
needs. Displaced persons are regularly faced
with a choice between hunger and going
home, even though return may mean living
where there are minefields, a constant threat
of armed attack, forced recruitment of children,
and insufficient assistance from human
rights organisations. Although they are not
guaranteed any financial support at home,
social and family ties, as well as organisations
like JRS in Cerro Azul, make surviving
from week to week somehow possible.
Juan Manuel Bustillo,
Advocacy Officer,
JRS Colombia
Maize,
a staple
part of the
Colombian
diet
Returned IDP,
Colombia
SERVIR No. 37 – March 2006 5

THAILAND
Struggling
Vera den Otter
Life for Xiong Pa (not his real name),
a Laotian refugee, is not easy. His family,
he says, does not have enough
food to eat breakfast everyday. The rest of
the time they usually just eat rice.
He recalls, “we asked the Bangkok Refugee
Centre (BRC, a local NGO partner of
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency) to give
us some money, as the subsistence allowance
they give us is not enough to buy food.
Of the 3,500 baht (approximately 70 euros)
my brother and I are given, 2,500 goes on
rent, the other 1,000 baht is spent on things
like soap, transport and the like. We cannot
afford to spend it on food. The last 10 days
of the month are the worst, the money runs
out quickly, and we have to skip more meals.
Since we don’t have money for clothes, we
go to JRS and they give us some”.
Xiong’s kitchen
Xiong’s living room
Xiong Pa lives in a crowded room with eight
other family members: three of his brothers
and their wives and children. The children
do not get the variety of food they so
need while growing up. Like Xiong, the two
eldest, 12 and 15 years old, only eat two
meals of plain rice per day. They have
learned to live with it and do not complain.
His younger nephew though, cries day and
night of hunger, but all the family can give
him is some rice soup with a bit of sugar.
Xiong says his family is lucky because they
live above a restaurant owned by their landlord.
Sometimes they are able to receive
food other than rice in exchange for work.
They also have relatives who occasionally
give them a little extra money when it can
be spared. He knows at least 10 other families
who receive nothing extra and suffer
much more than his does.
Before the subsistence allowances were cut
by 30 percent on 31 August 2005, UNHCR
gave him and his brother 5,400 baht. Xiong
says his life was okay then; he could buy
food and sometimes clothes. When he first
heard UNHCR was going to cut the subsistence
allowance, he was hoping they
6

THAILAND
to get by in a big city
would help him find work, and it would not
be so bad. For nearly four months he heard
nothing, until last December when someone
from BRC came to interview him.
Xiong told him he would like to work at
home, but he has not heard from them since.
Now, there are rumours that UNHCR will
completely cut refugee assistance in 2006.
Xiong cannot find work and does not know
what to do. Naturally, it makes him worry
about his family and others in the same predicament.
“Some families I know have 13 children.
They will really suffer if they can’t get financial
assistance. Where are they going
to live? What will they eat?”
ures, and commits the organisation to providing
food and shelter assistance in order
to meet the basic needs of refugees.
JRS Thailand is aware of studies undertaken
on the impact of UNHCR self-reliance
strategies on refugees in New Delhi,
Cairo and Moscow, yet, no such study has
been done in Thailand. Similar in-depth
knowledge of refugees in Bangkok and
other urban areas hosting refugees in Thailand
are simply not available. However,
anecdotal evidence of the effects on JRS’
clients is extremely worrying.
The Thai government is not a signatory to
the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. As such,
refugees recognised by UNHCR do not
have legal status in Thailand or the right to
work. Bangkok, an increasingly expensive
middle-income developing city, offers few
opportunities for refugees to earn a living.
Most are not optimistic about the future.
After the allowances were cut, many refugees
frantically began looking for food.
They turned to JRS for assistance, particularly
Cambodians and Laotians with large
families. African refugees, for whom it is
even more difficult to find a job in the informal
labour market, desperately sought
to be resettled to a third country. The JRS
urban refugee programme, established to
assist asylum seekers, responded as best
as it could to the dire situation faced by
many refugees.
One of the official reasons that assistance
to refugees was cut, was to promote selfsufficiency;
an unlikely outcome given that
refugees are prohibited from undertaking
paid employment in the formal labour market.
In response to the dire circumstances
many refugees faced, UNHCR seems to
have reversed its stance. A draft of its revised
policy acknowledges the previous fail-
At the moment, support provided under the
UNHCR Thailand urban refugee programme
is insufficient. If the large budget
cuts announced for 2006 are implemented,
it seems inevitable that further cuts in refugee
subsistence allowances will have to be
implemented. If denied sufficient income
to pay for basic necessities, as in Xiong Pa’s
case, refugees risk being forced to reduce
the amount and quality of food they consume.
Of course, vulnerable refugees, especially
children, will be hit the hardest.
Vera den Otter, Information/
Advocacy Officer, JRS Thailand
Laotian
refugee
children in
Thailand
SERVIR No. 37 – March 2006 7

TANZANIA
Between
hunger
and home
Refugee
woman
collecting
firewood
Minh-Chau Le
Agroup of Burundian refugee women
patiently wait for their group leader
to present their ration cards and
collect the sacks of food. In the camps in
northwestern Tanzania, refugees do not
collect their rations individually. On each
street, they are grouped by family size.
Typically, when the leader receives all the
food, the group members assist him, carrying
the sacks and containers out of the
fenced-in area to divide the food.
Busy hands pour oil into individual containers,
measure cups of maize grain and tie sacks of
beans. After collecting her rations, Gloriose
(not her real name) steps away from the group
to balance her family’s 34kg of maize grain
on her head. With an oil can in one hand, and
her 16-month old baby tied to her back, she
leads her 9-year old daughter, Jackie (not her
real name) back to their mud-brick home.
Jackie walks slowly, burdened by 10kg of
beans and porridge flour perched on her head.
Every two weeks, on distribution day, she has
to take the day off school in order to help her
mother. “I don’t mind the weight,” Gloriose
grins, “I wish it was heavier, much heavier!”
When Gloriose’s family receives their full
ration allowance, it still amounts to less than
the recommended minimum of 2,100 calories
per person per day. Even the UN
agency, the World Food Programme (WFP)
acknowledges that people cannot be expected
to survive on such a limited diet.
Tanzanian law and policy prohibits refugees
in these camps from working, undertaking
any form of business activities or being more
than four km away from the camps. It is
essentially impossible for a refugee to abide
by these laws. Not provided with firewood
to cook their rations, they must risk arrest,
police abuse, assault and even rape as punishment
for simply leaving the camps to collect
it, or buying it from those who do. In
addition, the maize grain provided, a main
staple of their limited diet, is not in an edible
form; it must be milled into maize flour.
Gloriose can only feed her family by spending
about 2,500 shillings, just over two euros,
on firewood and 700 shillings to mill the
grain every two weeks. To do this, a refugee
without income would be forced to sell
8

TANZANIA
some rations. Oil is the first thing to be sold,
and Gloriose could get 1,200 shillings for
her ration of oil. For the remaining 2,000
shillings she would have to sell approximately
10kg of her maize flour.
If Gloriose did this, it would be literally impossible
to survive on that amount of food.
Therefore, Gloriose’s family breaks Tanzanian
law on a regular basis. Her husband
works for local Tanzanian farmers and receives
600 shillings per day. Though the
income is less than 10 euros per month, it is
enough to buy the firewood and pay for
milling the maize.
Occasionally, she will also venture up to 10km
outside of the camp to collect wood, especially
when the family needs to save money
to buy clothes, furniture or pay school fees.
The money also buys onions and tomatoes
for the bean stew her family eats almost daily,
as well as some cassava and bananas, which
the family enjoys for variety.
“They expect us to eat boiled beans and ugali
(maize bread) every day, sometimes without
even salt. Could you do that for 12
years?” Breaking the law is the only way to
survive. But recently, Gloriose and her husband
have considered another way. “Things
are becoming unbearable,” she shakes her
head. “The camp is insecure. Children die
from malaria. And the rations go up and
down, but we are the last to know”. Her
husband, Zenon (not his real name), interrupts,
“maybe we must leave the camp, and
go back to Burundi”.
Though some families are able to save considerable
amounts of money, food, rent and
are even able to cultivate land outside the
camp, Gloriose’s family survives from food
distribution to food distribution. They have no
insurance for periods when rations are cut.
In 2005, when rations were cut to only 67
percent of the norm, Gloriose says, “we borrowed
money for food. I went to collect firewood
everyday to sell it. It was a bad time”.
Though rations have since stabilised, they
remain unreliable. For refugees like Gloriose,
food insecurity is a push factor. Though repatriation
should be completely voluntary,
insufficient rations force refugees to consider
going home as a survival technique,
not a choice. One of Gloriose’s neighbours
commented: “It is better to return and die
from a gunshot than being threatened to
death by hunger...” Inadequate rations
threaten refugees in ways much more complicated
than just calories. Community service
officials in the camps have informed JRS
staff that stress caused from inadequate
rations increases the likelihood of domestic
violence and abuse.
Better ration levels from WFP would certainly
help the situation, but it is still a solution
that would leave Gloriose and her family
at the mercy of others. Refugee leaders
agree the best solution would be to allow
refugees to work and start businesses and
become self-sufficient. This would avoid
over dependence on international food aid,
which has never been very reliable.
Minh-Chau Le, Public
Relations Officer, Radio
Kwizera, JRS Tanzania
Refugee child
collecting food
SERVIR No. 37 – March 2006 9

SUDAN
Food or
Emer Kerrigan
Gulu,
northern
Uganda,
near Sudan
Lobone, seven kilometres from the northern
Uganda border, is now home to many
displaced communities from the recently
ended 21-year-long war between the
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army
and the government of Sudan.
The 1994 war displaced many Dinka people
south to Lobone. As many as four-fifths of
the 33,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs)
in Lobone are Dinka. Families were forced to
leave their cattle behind and turn to crop cultivation
as the main source of food. Inadequate
farming methods and an over-reliance on three
crops has had a damaging effect on the nutrition
of the community. Malnutrition rates have
risen causing children to be regularly admitted
to the local hospital and mothers to miss adult
literacy classes to take care of sick relatives.
In 2001, JRS began providing communities with
education and pastoral services, including guidance,
schools materials and financial support
to teachers. Consequently, education has flourished
in the area in recent years. Standards rise
annually and currently Lobone accommodates
seven primary schools, one secondary school,
11 nursery schools and nine adult literacy centres,
with a student population of nearly 8,000.
Despite an abundance of fertile land in Lobone
and the increasing availability of education,
food insecurity remains a threat to the community.
It affects all aspects of education, influencing
the attendance of adults and children
and the intellectual development of children.
The vast majority of people in the area survive
directly on what they grow; few individuals
have the training or education to earn
an income elsewhere. Cultivation and harvesting
seasons are crucial to the survival of
the family. During these periods, children and
mothers, who form the vast majority of adult
learners, stay off school to work. Moreover,
between May and July, school attendance is
also poor as food runs short in the community
and the students are forced to go to
Uganda in search of food.
One means of addressing food insecurity is
through the school meals programme facilitated
jointly by Catholic Relief Services and
JRS. The programme encourages the children
to stay in school until the lunch hour and provides
them with nutrition which may not be
available at home. This food is crucial to their
cognitive development and contributes to the
improvement in the children’s attention span.
Many of the students are orphans and reside
with extended families. Providing their own
lunches to take to school would place an excessive
strain on their extended families.
Nevertheless, the delivery of food is occasionally
delayed. Food can only be transported
on one road from Uganda which is
frequently attacked by the Ugandan rebel
group, the Lord’s Resistance Army. Due to
the attacks, school attendance is immediately
affected, often decreasing by as much as
three quarters.
The future of education of the internally displaced
community in Lobone is entirely dependent
on the food security in the area.
Although education is valued for its long-term
benefits, it is the basic and immediate need
of food that is the most influential determinant
to the success of the education programme
in Lobone.
Emer Kerrigan,
Administrator,
JRS Sudan
10

NAMIBIA
school
Joanne Whitaker RSM
Osire Refugee Camp, central Namibia,
is home to about 23,000 refugees,
mostly Angolans. One day during
the school year, our JRS team made its usual
visit. It was late morning when we arrived
and went directly to the primary school. We
discovered many of the children were absent.
Most were standing in the queue to receive
their monthly food rations or assisting
their families and others to collect their rations.
Those who were not in the queue were
busy working, transporting heavy loads of
maize or cooking oil from the distribution point
back to the camp. Distribution usually occurrs
once a month, but often more.
to ask for assistance and set up a project for
girls between the ages of 10 to 20 called the
Osire Girls Club. The purpose of the club was
to help girls stay in school by offering extracurricular
activities, including some supplemental
food supplies which could be taken to
their families. These efforts, while not completely
successful, did significantly reduce
girls’ absence and withdrawal from school.
We felt powerless. Families needed assistance.
Many students used the opportunity to
supplement their rations. We needed to face
reality and to plan lessons and exams for days
when the children would not be needed to
collect the food.
An even more disturbing reality was the complete
withdrawal of children from school, especially
girls, to assist the family in getting
food. They would work in the family’s garden
or stay at home to take care of younger
children while the adults looked for work on
nearby farms or wherever they could find
some temporary work. Work outside the camp
often created problems for the refugees. The
government did not allow refugees to work.
In some cases, farmers would not pay the
refugees and tell them to get off their farm or
they would report them to the police for trespassing
and stealing their cattle. Girls, especially
those alone in the camp without parents,
would sometimes end up being sexually exploited
for money. In fact, this even happened
to girls with parents. The parents would be
forced to accept their daughter’s prostitution
out of desperation. Once this started, the girls
almost never returned to school.
Again, finding an effective response to this
problem was difficult. JRS met with teachers,
parents, and camp leaders to raise the
issue as one of major concern. We had meetings
with the police and camp administration
Namibia is not unique. The choice – food or
school – occurs throughout southern Africa,
and, indeed, across the continent. In fact in
neighbouring Zambia, the UN agency, the
World Food Programme has reduced food
rations for refugees and estimates that, unless
donations increase, they will be forced
to cease food distribution to refugees in March
2006. It is an ongoing dilemma, not only
among refugees and asylum seekers, but for
many young people affected by poverty and
made orphans by AIDS.
Joanne Whitaker RSM,
Regional Director,
JRS Southern Africa
Sudanese
refugee,
Kejokeji,
southern
Sudan
SERVIR No. 37 – March 2006 11

How to help one person
The mission of JRS is to
accompany, serve and
defend the rights of refugees
and forcibly displaced people,
especially those who are
forgotten about and who do
not attract international
attention. We do this through
our projects in over 50
countries world-wide,
providing assistance in the
form of education, health care,
pastoral work, skills training,
income generating activities
and many more services to the
refugees.
JRS relies for the most part on
donations from private
individuals and development
and church agencies.
Here are some examples
of how JRS funds are used:
• To provide education for a child
for a year in a community primary
school in Yei, Sudan
$30 US
• To provide legal counselling to an
asylum seeker or a refugee for a
year in Bangkok, Thailand
$31 US
• To give medical assistance to a refugee
for a year in Harare, Zimbabwe
$37 US
• To construct a house for a person
with a landmine-related disability
and their family in Cambodia
$400 US
• To provide a workshop on human
rights for internally displaced
persons in Colombia
$450 US
• To produce and transmit for one
week a radio programme on
peace & reconciliation in northwestern
Tanzania
$1,120 US
SUPPORT OUR WORK WITH REFUGEES
Your continued support makes it possible for us to help refugees and asylum
seekers in over 50 countries. If you wish to make a donation, please fill in this
coupon and forward it to the JRS International office. Thank you.
(Please make cheques payable to Jesuit Refugee Service)
I want to support the work of JRS
Servir is published in March,
September and December by
the Jesuit Refugee Service,
established by Pedro
Arrupe SJ, in 1980.
JRS, an international Catholic
organisation, accompanies,
serves, and advocates the
cause of refugees and
forcibly displaced people.
Publisher: Lluís Magriñà SJ
Editor: James Stapleton
Production: Stefano Maero
Assistant Production:
Sara Pettinella
Servir is available free in
English, Spanish, French
and Italian.
e-mail: servir@jrs.net
write: Jesuit Refugee Service
C.P. 6139
00195 Roma Prati
ITALY
tel: +39 06 6897 7386
fax: +39 06 6880 6418
Dispatches, a twice monthly
news bulletin from the JRS
International Office detailing
refugee news briefings and
updates on JRS projects and
activities, available free by
e-mail in English, Spanish,
French or Italian.
To subscribe to Dispatches:
http://www.jrs.net/lists/manage.php
Cover photo:
Tanzania.
Photo by Mark Raper SJ/JRS.
Please find enclosed a donation of
My cheque is attached
Surname:
Address:
City:
Country:
Name:
Post Code:
Photo credits:
Francesco Spotorno (pgs 2 above, 4);
Nina Rücker (pg. 3);
JRS Colombia (pg. 5); Noparat
Thiannimitdomrong/JRS (pg. 6);
Jan Cooney/JRS (pg. 7);
Libby Rogerson IBVM/JRS (pg. 8);
Mark Raper SJ/JRS (pgs 9, 12);
Don Doll SJ/JRS (pgs 10, 11).
Telephone:
Fax:
Email:
12
Bank:
Account name:
Account numbers:
For bank transfers to JRS
Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Roma (Italy), Ag. 12
ABI: 05696 – CAB: 03212 – SWIFT: POSOIT22
JRS
• for Euro: 3410/05
IBAN: IT 86 Y 05696 03212 000003410X05
• for US dollars: VAR 3410/05
IBAN: IT 97 O 05696 03212 VARUS0003410
www.jrs.net