Casina Pio IV, Vatican City—Blue Chip Foundation, represented by founder Jennifer Gross, participated in Ethics in Action 3: Migrants and Refugees on May 25 and 26 to help address the moral response to mass migration and the world’s current refugee crisis. Organized by Ethics in Action, a partnership of the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies, the UN Sustainable Development Network, Religions for Peace and the University of Notre Dame, dozens of attendees participated in promising dialogue and resulted in a pledge from EIA to fulfill six key pledges to help alleviate suffering and end the crisis.
“There are more than 65 million people who have been forcefully displaced,” says Gross, who helped found Ethics in Action. “The majority of these people are internally displaced persons, or IDPs. They’re not formal refugees crossing international borders, and they’re often displaced because of socio-economic, war, and terror.”
The number of people displaced has grown significantly since the early 2000s, and data from 2015 shows the highest rates ever recorded. Syria, Iraq and Yemen account for more than half of all IDPs today, and more than half of all “official” refugees are from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. Long-term conflicts in Africa are also culpable.
“As much as 75 percent of all humanitarian needs today stem from war,” says Gross. “Ending these wars can help alleviate these crises, but the fact still remains that there are millions of people who need immediate help. Certainly, the remaining 25 percent of humanitarian crises are due to natural disasters, but regardless of the causes, the poor and excluded are the first to suffer. While we are committed to helping those who need it, we’re also committed to preventing the root causes from creating more crises in the future.”
You can read the symposium’s resulting statement here.
Ethics in Action pledged to forge a partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, academicians of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and other experts to provide scientific evidence on the root causes of modern forced migrations. The conglomeration also pledged to:
- Call upon religious communities, civil society, business and government to take steps to end wars, overcome poverty and stop human-induced climate change and environmental degradation
- Push for an appropriate political response to the current forced migration crisis
- Work with the United Nations to support intergovernmental negotiations on a new UN Migration Compact
- Encourage and promote humanitarian corridors to help the most vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers
- Help religious leaders of all major faiths to proclaim the common value of all religions in extending generosity to migrants and refugees
- Support the Holy See’s new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
- Mobilize the UN, development leaders, businesses, high-net worth individuals and religious communities to direct billions of dollars in resources to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
- Promote moral education that includes the norms, virtues and values of empathy, compassion and solidarity
- Encourage businesses to provide good employment opportunities for newcomers
- Encourage governments to increase budgets for peace and support for sustainable development rather than for military spending
“This is one of the biggest issues of our time,” says Gross, “and we really need to change the way that many countries are handling migration. When tens of thousands of people re being turned away from safe havens that have room—and that have the ability to house and foster them until conditions stabilize in their own countries or welcome them to stay—it becomes a moral crisis. That’s what Ethics in Actionis working to change.”
