Refugee Highway Partnership

Europe facilitator Marco Vermin reports the encouraging story of a refugee and explains the KIA and RHP-Europe relationship within the RHP.

Refugee Highway Partnership -
Europe‘Partnering together for effective ministry among refugees’ 

In June of this year, the UNHCR published the 2006 refugee statistics. The alarming conclusion was that the refugee flow worldwide was at its highest point since 2002. Almost 10 million people have been classified by UNHCR as refugees. These are people who left their country out of fear. The largest group of refugees is still coming from Afghanistan (2.1 million), followed by
Iraq (1.7 million). In addition to that, there are about 24.5 million IDPs worldwide - an estimate of the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

IDPs are people who did not flee their country but who have found a reasonably safe shelter within the national borders. These numbers are hard to imagine. But these are all people – fathers, mothers and children. When looking at these statistics it is hard to imagine the world of an individual refugee, of a human face hidden behind these numbers. Even last week I spoke to an Afghan who applied to the organization I work for. He had been traveling with his entire family for a total of about three months. He had represented a high position within the media of his country. Formerly a Muslim, he had distanced himself from that as a teenager and now called himself an atheist. He was responsible for a large paper of the country, being a spokesperson for the government at that time. After a change in the regime he had to flee. He and his family stayed behind as one of the last of the extended family, but eventually they had to flee as well – at first within the country itself, and then later on via Pakistan and Russia to The Netherlands. There he was put on a train with the order to ask for asylum at the place of destination. This journey, which cost him € 20,000, ultimately led to a long period of uncertainty. Ever since December of 2001, the family has been waiting for a decision of the government. They have received their first rejection but started up a new procedure. Exactly in this period of exhaustive uncertainty, people from a local church visited him and his family. Exactly through these people he found Jesus. He had himself been baptized a number of years ago, the only one of his family. And now, with all of his talents, he wants to dedicate himself to his fellow countrymen. Here in this country and abroad as well he wants to share with them the wonderful news about Jesus.

That is what the Refugee Highway Partnership (abbreviated as: RHP) stands for, linking Christian organizations and local churches worldwide to be like Jesus for the refugees.

This is in order to give hope to individual refugees together with the worldwide church. The RHP has been in existence now for almost 8 years. Because the needs of a refugee who made it into Europe are different than those of e.g. a refugee in Africa, the RHP divided the world into regions,
Europe being one of them. KIA is part of the RHP-Europe and functions as country coordinator representing
Norway within that team. As a participant, KIA is linked this way to all organizations and churches represented within RHP and it works with them in bringing hope – in Word and Deed - to those who have come from so far and are now so close.

Marco Vermin, November 2007

Related websites: www.rhp-europe.net, www.gave.nl, www.unhcr.org