The Jesuit Approach to Refugees: Perspectives from Latin America Dr. Luis Arriaga Valenzuela S.J.
Good afternoon to everyone in Santa Clara University, good morning in Perth, good evening to the ITESO community in Guadalajara, Mexico. Thank you for your kind introduction. It is a pleasure to share with you some perspectives on the Jesuit approach to collaborating with refugees, from the standpoint of the Association of Jesuit Universities in Latin America – AUSJAL for its Spanish acronym – and of ITESO, a Latin American Jesuit University located in Guadalajara, Mexico. I highly appreciate the Santa Clara University School of Law, the Center for Social Justice and Public Service, the High Tech Law Institute, and the Global Law and Policy Center for the invitation to this webinar.
I will organize my presentation in three sections, beginning with a brief reference to Jesuit work with refugees, continuing with how AUSJAL serves refugees in Latin America, and ending with an outlook to the future of collaboration with forcibly displaced persons from the viewpoint of the universities entrusted to the Society of Jesus in Mexico, Central America, and South America.
The Society of Jesus has been characterized by an international vision and by working in a global scale since its foundation in the 16th century. Jesuits have been committed with the most pressing challenges of humanity, particularly with the most disadvantaged.
This commitment is framed on the basis of three criteria, to classify the Social Apostolate of the Society of Jesus’ responses to defend human dignity. 1. Where there exists the most need, to crystallize the most need, there should be analysis of places where there exist major injustices; 2. To obtain the best results possible where Jesuits can make better use of their time; 3. To facilitate the most universal good that brings about the creation of structural changes that favor dignified life of the majority.
Thus, the dignity of the person was the point of merger and of convergence among the Jesuits and those collaborating with their work. For that matter, it was not religion but ethics that brought about dialogue and aspired to make history of the promotion of justice. Such is the understanding present in the
Society’s Communal Reflection on Jesuit Mission in Higher Education, a Way of Proceeding, published in 2002.
The above implies a dialogue with society participants committed to establishing a national and international order, based on laws capable of widening and augmenting everyone’s access to a protection guaranteed of these minimal rights. As it is declared by the Jesuit top Government authority, the global assembly we call General Congregation: “We have recognized our conscience in critical situations that affect hundreds of millions of people and that, because of that, demand a special interest on the part of the Society” (Society of, General Congregation 34, Decree 3, n. 11). Such is the situation of refugees all over the world. Based on the 20th century Jesuit approaches to these premises, Father General Pedro Arrupe, S.J. created the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in 1980.
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an international Catholic organization with the mission of accompanying, serving, and advocating on behalf of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. JRS’s work expresses the commitment of the Society of Jesus to stand with refugees around the world.
JRS programs are currently active in 56 countries, serving refugees and other forcibly displaced persons in conflict zones and detention centers, on remote borders and busy cities.
The Service includes pastoral care and psychosocial support programs in detention centers and refugee camps, and provides humanitarian relief in emergency displacement situations. Education and livelihoods programs provide skill development and opportunities for integration into host communities. We never cease to advocate for the rights of refugees, and to articulate the obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us.
From a Latin American standpoint, Jesuit universities promote several efforts in order to contribute with the training and advocacy in the service of refugees.
In AUSJAL, our Human Rights Training Program, working since 2013, is based on the collaboration of:
• 11 of the 30 AUSJAL universities, including universities in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, and three Mexican universities, in Puebla, Mexico City, and Guadalajara, • Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, • Jesuit Refugee Service in Latin America, • Among other international and local-based organizations. One of our strategic contributions is the training of agents who accompany and serve forcibly displaced persons in the Amazonian region, where governments and companies are invading their lands in order to over-exploit the territory.
AUSJAL Human Rights Training Program is based on an interdisciplinary, inclusive, multicultural, approach to peace, democracy and development. It blends distance training with face-to-face workshops, and offers four complementary certifications: • Access to Justice • Citizenship, advocacy and Human Rights • Education in Human Rights • Human Security and human Rights
Our Program trains a diversity of professionals, with a vast majority working directly in human rights advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable populations in the region. These professionals include: • Lawyers, diplomats. • Educators, social workers, psychologists and sociologists. • Doctors, nurses, and public health specialists. • Architects, administrators. • Police and military officers. • Clerics and other religious agents. This is a picture from our Programme 2020 alumni and teacher reunion in the Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City.
We have trained 1,642 alumni, from 2003 to 2019. • 60 percent of them are women, which is outstanding considering the Latin American context, • 50 percent of our students work in Mexico and Central America, • 48 percent are engaged in South American Human Right organizations, • 2 are professionals from 7 countries abroad, specially from European foundations collaborating with the Jesuits and NGOs. Participants typically cannot pay. Thus, their participation is financially supported by each university and AUSJAL.
Finally, I would like to focus on some features of Jesuit collaboration with refugees, in the contemporary context of global cooperation, challenges such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the calling of Pope Francis to the Catholics to take care of our Common House, with an environmental justice approach.
First, I would like to mention the foundation of the International Association of Jesuit Universities – I.A.J.U.– in 2018. I.A.J.U. is a 200-university global “network of networks”: • AUSJAL is one of the six IAJU regional networks, • the AJCU, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Schools in the United States, is another regional network, besides four other networks from Europe, Africa, South Asia and East Asia, and Oceania (Melbourne Spirituality College). IAJU’s first out of five priorities is to bring higher education to the marginalized and the disadvantaged through collaboration with groups such as Jesuit Refugee Service. This cooperation is possible due to high-tech based blended training programs similar to the AUSJAL Human Rights Program, taking higher education, for example, from Regis University in Colorado to Afghanistan refugee camps where the Society of Jesus works.
Second, I would like to speak of an example of the short and long-term configuration of Jesuit collaboration with refugees. I am talking of AUSJAL Human Rights Training Program’s expansion in the Amazonian region, with the support of: • Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM). • Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). • Campion Hall’s Research Center on Laudato si’, ran by Jesuit theologians in collaboration with an interdisciplinary group of researchers from Oxford University
• The Jesuit Pan Amazonian Service. • Other South American Catholic Universities, such as de Peruvian Pontifical Catholic University, and the Helder Camara University in Brazil.
Recent collaborations with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network include: • Report on the Situation of Human Rights of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Pan-Amazon Region. • Resolution 1/2020: Pandemic and Human Rights in the Americas. We will be presenting this report and this resolution along with the Inter American Commissioner on Human Rights, Antonia Urrejola, and Executive Secretary, Paulo Abrão. The international strategic litigation and integral ecology approaches that these documents adopt should guide the Amazonian School on Human Rights, among other Jesuit advocacy efforts on behalf of refugees, both in the short and long-term future.
Thank you.