Jesuit Refugee Service Malta Resources

JRS strongly promotes the values, rights and protection enshrined in the 1951 Convention, by accompanying refugees and asylum seekers, including those who are detained; by defending their rights through legal and other services as well as with wider advocacy. The Geneva Convention and other international treaties form the basis of our actions as does the Church’s more expansive definition of de facto refugees. For JRS, international laws and definitions are an expression
of the deeper Gospel value of hospitality, which embraces the stranger “simply because,” as Fr General said, “he or she is a human being who deserves welcome and respect.” SERVIR 51 (34)

Have you ever sat in an overcrowded flimsy boat? Even just imagining it is enough to create anxiety. How desperate does a person have to be to get on such a boat? Does anyone remember the mass exodus of refugees in the aftermath of the Vietnam War in the late seventies and early eighties? Ever since, the term “boat people” has described those who, driven by despair, cross the sea in overloaded craft often unfit for travel. They risk their lives to find security and freedom from violence, repression and poverty. Today there are still boat people; it is just the faces and nationalities that have changed. They are women and men from Africa who see no future in their war-torn, impoverished surroundings. Falling prey to human smugglers, they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea, setting out from Morocco or Libya. Download Servir 49 (43)

This issue of Servir, the magazine of the international office, marks the 30th anniversary of the foundation of Jesuit Refugee Service by Father Pedro Arrupe on 14 November 1980. Servir 50 (41)