BWA council urges justice for immigrants & refugees

The Baptist World Alliance General Council meeting in Prague approved a resolution declaring solidarity with immigrants, refugees and internally displaced people.

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PRAGUE, Czech Republic (BWA)—The Baptist World Alliance General Council approved a resolution declaring solidarity with immigrants, refugees and internally displaced people.

The resolution, approved at the General Council’s meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, stated that “we are all fellow sojourners in this world and that our treatment of the immigrants in our midst is central to authentic scriptural faith.”
 
Council members called on Baptists to “renew their scriptural study, academic understanding and prophetic proclamation of the scriptural mandate to live in love and justice with refugees and immigrants.”
 
Noting there are more than 67 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world, and more than 191 million international migrants, the BWA General Council urged Baptists to “freely share resources with those in need… instill an ethic of love that supersedes ethnic, gender and political boundaries,” and “act as advocates for refugees and migrants.”
 
The resolution came against the background of escalating tensions in parts of the world where refugees and migrants experience increasing levels of discrimination and violence. Paul Msiza, General Secretary of the Baptist Convention of South Africa, apologized to members of the council for the ethnic violence against migrant workers in that country in May.
 
Concern was expressed about the treatment and state of internally displaced people in Myanmar and the Roma people in Italy, for whom a special resolution was also passed. It said the General Council, the highest decision-making body of the BWA outside of the Baptist World Congress “laments that the Italian government, without objection of the European Union, is practicing the involuntary fingerprinting of all Roma people within its borders, including children, which we regard as ethnic profiling.”
 
Council members hoped the BWA will take action to bring the state of refugees and migrants to the world’s attention and to intervene through the United Nations and with individual governments.
 
Members of the council also voted unanimously to establish a BWA Division of Freedom and Justice.

 


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