Vatican official urges more protection for refugees, displaced persons

(June 24, 2010) A Vatican official said the international community should create wider categories of protection for the growing number of refugees and displaced persons. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, said states have an ethical responsibility to respond to the needs of refugees and displaced persons and to reject the disinformation that fuels fear of other cultures. "The responsibility we owe to vulnerable groups of our one human family prompts adequate answers to remedy the violation of rights and to assist the victims," Archbishop Tomasi told a meeting of the executive committee of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees June 22. "Today's 'boat people' from Africa, Asia and elsewhere cannot simply be towed back to the port of origin of their journey, as if distancing their presence would offer a real solution. Similarly, the automatic resort to detaining potential refugees and asylum seekers -- often in appalling conditions -- is inappropriate," he said. Archbishop Tomasi said the number of people of concern to the UNHCR has grown to 43.3 million worldwide, the highest number since the 1990s. Those needing "more targeted" protection, he said, include mixed flows of refugees and migrants, the millions of internally displaced people in places such as Colombia and Kyrgyzstan, and the rising number of urban refugees.