Rallying to Aid Refugees in Uganda and Lebanon

Organizations and parishes show charity and hospitality to displaced persons, including many fellow Catholics.

Above, Ayivu Primary School has opened it's new classrooms in Bidibidi Refugee Settlement. Catholic Relief Services is building five schools. All schools will be completed by the end of 2019, providing access to education to 10,000-plus children in Bidi Bidi refugee settlement. To date, 24,000 refugees and host communities in Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement have access to WASH services through CRS interventions, including construction of household latrines, construction of permanent water points and distribution of WASH-related non-food items.
Above, Ayivu Primary School has opened it's new classrooms in Bidibidi Refugee Settlement. Catholic Relief Services is building five schools. All schools will be completed by the end of 2019, providing access to education to 10,000-plus children in Bidi Bidi refugee settlement. To date, 24,000 refugees and host communities in Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement have access to WASH services through CRS interventions, including construction of household latrines, construction of permanent water points and distribution of WASH-related non-food items. (photo: Karin Bridger and Oscar Leiva/CRS )

In 2016 Father Robert Ayiko and his parish in northwestern Uganda were still figuring out how they could assist refugees at a rapidly growing settlement camp six miles away, when they discovered that some of the Catholic refugees were already finding their way to the parish on foot.

A significant number of the 228,000 refugees living in the Yumbe District, which includes the large Bidi Bidi settlement, are Catholic, presenting Father Ayiko, his associate pastor and his parishioners at Mary, Queen of Heaven, with a challenge and a great hope.

“When you go among these refugees, really, you’ll be touched,” Father Ayiko said. “You just see the need to work for them. When you see the situation of the people, the faith among them, the prayers they offer, reflecting what is happening in [South] Sudan, you are automatically touched; you just feel you must be one with them and continue to help them.”

The Ugandan government allows the country’s 1.3 million refugees, who are mostly fleeing war and conflict in neighboring countries, to work, study and have access to land and social services while in and outside of 11 settlements. Local Catholics assist and collaborate with refugees when they can — despite their own limited resources.

Worldwide almost 71 million people have been forcibly displaced because of persecution, conflict, violence or human-rights violations, according to 2019 data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which assists refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Of the 71 million, 41 million are displaced within their own countries, 26 million live in other countries and 3.5 million are seeking asylum

Refugees spend on average 10 1/2 years in exile, according to one estimate by the World Bank.

Since civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013, 2.3 million have fled their country, according to the UNHCR. Many refugees from South Sudan and also from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have sought shelter in Uganda, which has the highest concentration of refugees in eastern Africa.

 

Increased Challenges

The number of South Sudanese becoming refugees has increased only slightly in the past year, said Niek de Goeij, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) country representative for Uganda, based in the capital, Kampala. “I would say we’re not facing the same challenge we faced two or three years ago, where thousands of people were fleeing across the border in a month and where the humanitarian response was extremely difficult.”

Located 22 miles south of the South Sudanese border, the 145-square-mile Bidi Bidi settlement is roughly the size of the English city of Birmingham. Since 2017, CRS has worked with Mary, Queen of Heaven, parish in helping the refugees.

“If you suddenly have 100,000 Catholic faithful that have arrived, that is a lot to absorb for a community, for a very simple local parish,” de Goeij said. “Yumbe was a village where the country kind of ended, and, now, they suddenly find themselves in the middle surrounded by a quarter of a million people.”

Besides Father Ayiko and his associate, five priests from a the Society of the Divine Word,

who previously worked in South Sudan, now work with refugees at Bidi Bidi. Some of the refugees did not receive sacraments of initiation and had limited access to Mass in their home country because of a priest shortage, Father Ayiko said.

“Though this was the worst situation, it has made them come closer to Christ, because where they come from they have never seen a priest for a year,” he said. “They have an opportunity to practice their faith.”

Father Ayiko’s parishioners visit the refugees, help train them to be leaders and catechists, and contribute clothing and school supplies.

Another Ugandan parish offering refugees food, clothing and other items, is Holy Trinity Disozi, located near the Rwamwanja settlement in southwestern Uganda. Many of the settlement’s roughly 70,000 refugees are from Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as South Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi. Almost half are Catholic, said Father Sylvanus Mushabe, a priest in the parish’s diocese who served at the settlement during the summer.

About 366,000 DRC refugees/asylum seekers are living in Uganda, UNHCR figures show, and according to de Goeij, the population has increased in the past eight months. Along with enduring a long civil war, the Congolese are currently battling an outbreak of the Ebola virus, although not many seem to be fleeing because of Ebola, he said.

Holy Trinity parishioners reach out to refugees by involving them in liturgies and activities, Father Mushabe said.

“They are not giving because they are able, but they are giving because they are seeing the need,” he said. “They are giving from their own need.”

Besides Holy Trinity’s two priests, Father Mushabe said he knew of no Catholic clearly nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) serving the settlement. The refugees especially need priests, as well as teachers, school supplies and feminine hygiene supplies.

“They need someone to be there for them, for confessions, for baptisms, for weddings, for counseling,” Father Mushabe said.

 

Refugees and Relief

Many of the refugees have experienced trauma, including traveling far to reach safety, said Yves Rene Shema, regional communications coordinator for Jesuit Refugee Service in Eastern Africa, who is based in Nairobi, Kenya. Jesuit Refugee Service offers psychosocial support, education, work and life skills training and other services.

“Some of them traveled for a month,” he said. “They have a lot of trauma and have lost everything, not only the structure of their communities, but also have lost possessions.”

The refugees find comfort in their faith, Father Ayiko said. “Having a sense of prayer and being close to God is one of their biggest consolations,” he said. “When they see us they think we’ve come to solve their problems, and they present their issues to us.”

Host country residents also sometimes experience fatigue from caring for refugees, especially when local communities and refugees have some of the same needs, Shema said. In areas where natural resources are limited, refugees and residents may be in competition.

But in some locations the two groups collaborate for the benefit of all, including through donations and savings and internal lending operations, de Goeij said.

When CRS begins a relief project it seeks to balance host and refugee benefits with participation so social capital grows between them, he said, highlighting especially water and latrine projects.

“If we can keep that momentum of both refugees and host communities seeing the benefits of this, it would be great, and I think that acceptance is still going to remain there,” de Goeij said. “There’s a real risk especially around natural resources that the hospitality could get strained.”

Some refugees may choose to remain permanently in Uganda, as it’s unclear when it will be safe to return to their home countries. While living in their adopted country, Catholic refugees want to practice their faith and build more churches, Father Ayiko said.

Father Mushabe agreed that the refugees, assisted by their Ugandan hosts, continue to maintain hope.

“I was also touched by the refugees themselves,” he said. “They are in pain psychologically, and some have died, some have lost their dear ones, but they have hope. The children have big grins. Some want to be doctors; some want to be president, ministers or priests, lawyers, or engineers. They have big, big hope.”

Susan Klemond writes from St. Paul, Minnesota.

 

Helping the Forgotten Iraqi Refugees

A group of 4,500 Iraqi Chaldean Catholic families who escaped persecution under ISIS five years ago now find themselves struggling in Beirut, Lebanon, where their lack of refugee status prevents them from working, attending public school and receiving hospital care.

Depending on the charity of the Lebanese Chaldean bishop, aid agencies and other Lebanese Christians, these Christians in refugee-limbo remain strong in faith and hope, according to Gerard Abiassaf, vice president of St. Rafka Mission of Hope and Mercy, an entity of the Maronite Catholic Church based in Lakewood, Colorado, which provides aid to the refugees. St. Rafka (1832-1914) is a Lebanese saint canonized in 2001, who devoted her life as a religious sister to starting Catholic schools and providing education for Lebanese children.

“They are the forgotten refugees,” Abiassef said of the Iraqis who have come to Lebanon. “They are the ones that are not being accredited as refugees.”

The Chaldean and Maronite Churches are Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church that use the Aramaic language in their liturgies.

The families are among Lebanon’s 2.1 million refugees — many of them Syrian — who have increased the small country’s population by 50% in the past decade and are straining its resources.

When ISIS launched its attacks in 2014, families who had resources flew to Lebanon on tourist visas, Abiassaf said. When the visas expired, they weren’t allowed to renew them.

A second group were forced out of their homes by attackers who often didn’t allow them to take anything with them, including their documentation.

“They left their homes,” Abiassaf said. “They were not even allowed to have shoes.”

These families traveled on foot to Lebanon, he said. Because they feared for their safety in refugee settlement camps and refused to stay in them, they were not granted U.N. refugee status, he said. As a result, they haven’t received humanitarian aid from nongovernment organizations or assistance from the Lebanese government.

Families stay at St. Raphael the Archangel Chaldean Cathedral or with relatives or even on the street, Abiassaf said. Not feeling they can return to Iraq, some are trying to reunite with family members in other countries.

The Chaldean Bishop of Beirut, Michel Kassarji, is seeking aid to help more of the families. “It’s a crisis, and the bishop is trying to deal with it as best he can,” Abiassaf said.

For its part, St. Rafka’s provides monthly food and hygiene supplies for 200 of the families. The agency also helps with emergency medical assistance and shelter. Lebanese doctors donate medical care, but the families must pay upfront for hospital services, he said.

“What these refugees need is actually the promises made to them by the governments, by the churches, by those people and organizations that promised to help them. They need those promises to be fulfilled because they were not. They need their families to be reunited, they need a safe place to stay, and they need security. This is what they primarily need, and this is what we’re trying to respond to and solve that emergency.”

Along with providing aid, St. Rafka sponsors an annual Christmas gift party for children and is seeking donations to ship medical equipment to Lebanon to help the families.

About 40 Lebanese volunteers offer social visits, advocacy and prayer, as well as food acquisition and distribution.

Nineteen-year-old Anthony Nasrani of Lebanon has helped with St. Rafka food and gift distribution for five years and has been blessed by the Iraqi families’ joy despite their trauma and setbacks. He said it’s helped him to appreciate what he has.

“The secret that I learned from those refugees,” he told the Register, “is the meaning of life, the meaning of never giving up and the meaning of letting Jesus Christ control my life.”

 

 HOW YOU CAN HELP

For information about the Iraqi Chaldean Catholics in Lebanon and to make a donation to help them, visit https://missionofhopeandmercy.org/.