Refugee & Immigration Ministries

Worldwide Refugee Response

Disciples respond to emerging refugee situations through Week of Compassion, Church World Service, and Action by Churches Together. Each of these works in cooperation with the others and with church partners around the world to provide for the immediate and long term needs of refugees as they flee their homelands or become internally displaced in their own countries.

Once refugees have fled their homes, there are three main solutions to their plight:

• Repatriation - waiting until conditions improve and they can return home;
• Local Integration - staying in the community to which they have fled; or
• Resettlement - finding another country that is willing to take them.

For more than 50 years, DHM's Refugee and Immigration Ministries (RIM) program has provided congregations an opportunity to offer refugees the third solution of resettlement. However, less than one percent of the world's refugees ever receive this chance. More than seven million refugees have been living their lives in refugee camps or in segregated settlements for 10 years or longer, not including the Palestinians who have been refugees for generations.

In 2003, Church World Service created a special program for these long-suffering refugees, the Durable Solutions for Displaced Persons (DSDP) program. This program constantly seeks funding from individuals, churches, governments, and foundations in order to respond to the needs of refugees who are trapped in refugee camps, are internally displaced, or are just returning to their home countries from refugee camps (returnees). Your giving to Week of Compassion helps support the DSDP program. You can also give to this program through RIM's Alternative Giving Catalog.

Some of the projects currently included in the Church World Service DSDP program are:

• Material assistance to Burmese refugees along the Thai/Burma border;
• Health care for Afghan refugees in Pakistan and for returnees and the internally displaced in Afghanistan;
• Construction trade training for Afghan refugees in Pakistan and their host communities;
• Post-primary education for returnees in Burundi; 
• Protection and paralegal support for Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa; and
• "Mainstreaming Humanitarian Protection" which helps CWS view its programmatic interventions through the protection lense.  This project, started in 2008, helps minimize the risk that commuities face, by creating mechanisms for reporting of human rights abuses in humanitarian situations.

To learn more, visit the Church World Service Durable Solutions for Displaced Persons Web page.