On 1 July, the Jesuit Refugee Service presented its Annual Report 2024 and the new Strategic Framework 2025-2029, analysing both its impact over the past year and the future strategic directions to address the increasingly urgent challenges of accompanying and protecting refugees. 

Highlights from the JRS global Annual Report

In 2024, JRS reached 1,154,535 forcibly displaced people across 58 countries worldwide. 54% of people served were women and girls, a third of these in the area of education – a vital tool in challenging gender norms and building inclusive communities. Significant progress was made in some areas of the programme, such as the 40% increase in the number of people served in our economic inclusion programme compared to the previous year, and mental health and psychosocial support activities, which reached 205,000 in 2024 compared to 156,000 in 2023. 

Responding to the challenges ahead

While acknowledging the work carried out in 2024, the event also offered an opportunity to reflect on the reality of forced displacement and the challenges ahead in an increasingly polarised world. There is no denying that the events and political decisions taken in the first six months of the year have disrupted the humanitarian sector. 

Msgr. Robert Vitillo, Senior Advisor to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, opened the event reflecting on Pope Francis’s legacy regarding situations of forced displacement and Pope Leo’s call for peace.

A panel discussion led by Danielle Vella, JRS Head of Reconciliation, then featured the reflections of JRS International Director Br. Michael Schöpf, UISG Associate Executive Secretary Sr. Roxanne Schares, a human rights activist and refugee from Cameroon Duclair Ngongang Keumaleu, and a video contribution from the Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis Alistair Dutton.  

Br Michael spoke of the impact of the sudden cut in humanitarian funding by the US government earlier this year. Thanks to many partners who responded to the global emergency appeal, JRS was able to “not break the relationship with refugees from one day to the next. This is even more important than the services. We were able to stay and live with the people through the difficult situation. Once we break this relationship, we participate in a dehumanising agenda, and that is the worst we can do,” he said. 

Sr Roxanne also shared the importance of relationships and journeying together with one another. “The refugees are the true pilgrims of hope. When they leave such desperate situations, going through difficult situations just to try to survive, they are showing us how to hope against hope. And maybe that’s where we can begin,” she said. “If we are willing to journey with one another, with our forcibly displaced brothers and sisters, we become that ‘wider we’, and we discover our response, how we are to address this reality today.” 

To conclude the event, Duclair’s words resonated: “At the end of all the challenges that refugees and migrants experience, let us remember hope. Hope that all countries will welcome, integrate and promote refugees, because we are one community: the community of human beings, all with equal dignity. Then we can have peace.” 

You can watch the recording of the event here.