“The increasing use of detention to restrict and deter cross-border movement by asylum seekers and other migrants” has impelled the World Council of Churches’ (WCC) Global Ecumenical Network on Uprooted Peoples (GEN) to distribute a statement on this issue at a meeting of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees’ (UNHCR) Executive Committee this week in Geneva.
The statements says: "Churches are concerned that the global trend towards criminalising refugees, asylum seekers and migrants through tightened borders and increased detention results in decreased security for uprooted people and heightened vulnerability to exploitation, by smugglers and human traffickers along their journeys and by unscrupulous employers in the host country."
According to the GEN, "Such a response does nothing to address the root causes of forced migration, which include regional conflicts, climate change and sea level rise, and loss of livelihood due to corporate globalisation and free trade agreements that disadvantage countries of the South."
The statement says that punishing "asylum seekers along with other migrants who make clandestine border crossing but present no real threat to public safety" with the use of arbitrary detention seriously undermines the freedom to seek asylum.
Churches are concerned that the global trend towards criminalising refugees, asylum seekers and migrants through tightened borders and increased detention results in decreased security for uprooted people and heightened vulnerability to exploitation.
WCC Global Ecumenical Network on Uprooted Peoples
Alarming examples of arbitrate detention, along with abuses and infringements are mentioned in the GEN statement. It affirms the important role taken up by churches in serving the needs and rights of migrants and asylum seekers and calls on governments to "facilitate the work of the churches with the uprooted... [and] grant access to detention centres by church and civil society groups so that they might more effectively offer assistance to a highly vulnerable population".
The statement concludes: "Faced with this situation, the WCC GEN participants reaffirm our belief in the God-given dignity of all human beings, our commitment to advocating for the rights of uprooted people, and our dream of a world of compassion and hospitality."
The Global Ecumenical Network (GEN) unites regional and national ecumenical networks on uprooted people in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific.
Every year, the GEN meets to review the global situation and future trends affecting uprooted people and determine church responses to the needs of uprooted people.
