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Deep concern about "the increasing use of detention to restrict and deter cross-border movement by asylum seekers and other migrants" prompted the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Global Ecumenical Network on Uprooted Peoples (GEN) to circulate a statement on this issue at a meeting in Geneva this week of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' (UNHCR) Executive Committee.
"Churches are concerned that the global trend towards criminalizing 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," the GEN statement says.
According to the network, "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 globalization and free trade agreements that disadvantage countries of the South."
Furthermore, the use of arbitrary detention to punish "asylum seekers along with other migrants who make clandestine border crossing but present no real threat to public safety" gravely undermines the freedom to seek asylum the statement says.
Among the many alarming aspects of arbitrary detention, the GEN statement mentions repressive crackdowns against migrants. abuse and mistreatment of detainees, forcible removal of immigration detainees with little or no consideration of their needs upon arrival in the country of return, and use of offshore detention and processing centres that seriously threatens refugee protection.
The statement gives many examples of abuses and infringements of rights drawn from the global network's members' knowledge of what is happening in their own countries.
Affirming the important role played by churches in serving the needs and rights of migrants and asylum seekers, it 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".
"Faced with this situation," the statement concludes, "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 full text of the WCC-GEN statement is available on the WCC website at:
wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/regional/uprooted/gen-unhcr.html
The Global Ecumenical Network (GEN) brings together 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. Representatives of Roman Catholic organizations, some Christian world communions, and church-related agencies also participate. The GEN meets every year to review the global situation and future trends affecting uprooted people, to share information, and to determine church responses to the needs of uprooted people.
