Franck Brou SJ is a young Jesuit scholastic from Ivory Coast. He worked with migrants and refugees for five years in Calais, France, between 2019 and 2024. Franck then moved to the Central African Republic (CAR) in September 2024, where he joined JRS in Bangui and served as Education Monitoring Officer, focusing on education and protection.

He was impressed by the way people in exile understood protection – it has to do with trust, friendship and kindness. This is what Franck has experienced and shared with us. 

What does protection mean to you after working in extreme contexts? 

At a solidarity festival in Calais, organised by Secours Catholique in 2023, many displaced participants expressed that they did not feel respected, despite receiving basic necessities like food and hygiene items. One participant clearly voiced the deeper issue: “We want more than just receiving—we want to share our thoughts with you.” This made me think a lot on what protection really means. It showed a gap between the help people received and how included or valued they felt. The humanitarian system offered legal protection and material aid, but many still felt unheard, powerless, and dependent. They were often seen as objects of pity rather than as people with the ability to contribute and grow.  

This created a painful paradox: even though they received support, they didn’t feel truly protected—because real protection, to them, meant more than mere survival. It meant being seen, respected, and included.  

What is the context of CAR and JRS’s work there today?  

Since 1960, CAR has experienced intermittent conflicts that have severely disrupted its social and political fabric. People suffer the consequences of violence between the rebels and the villagers, as well as between the army and the rebels, who both try to occupy more territory with rich mines of gold and diamonds. At the root of the conflict and of the displacement of innocent people lies a profound greed to control the country’s mineral resources, particularly in the East-Central, North-West, and North-Central areas.   

The majority of the population served by JRS are internally displaced persons (IDPs), in the region of Bangui, Bambari, and Bria. Only in the past three years alone, JRS has supported over 20,000 people, offering access to livelihoods, and protection. 

What can JRS contribute to bring about meaningful change in the protection of refugees? What is JRS’s approach to protection? 

The testimony of a young woman from a village in CAR is a good example of how JRS understands protection, at least within the context in which I worked. This woman participated in one of the JRS’s educational programmes. When the conflict between Muslims and Christians broke out in 2013, she lost her entire family—everyone was killed except her. She was only 12 years old. When asked, “What marked you the most about the support from JRS?”, she answered: “JRS built a genuine and human relationship with me—one that was not artificial, but based on trust and respect, with the goal of helping me rebuild myself.” 

And when asked what motivated her to succeed, she said: “What gave me the desire to succeed was the sense of safety I felt from the friendship of JRS staff. I regained a taste for life. I felt safe, protected, and most importantly, treated as a human being in the fullest sense. That helped me hope again, with strength and determination. Without that friendship, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.” 

So, what does it truly mean to be protected for the exiled people? It is not just about walls, documents, or aid—it’s about feeling welcomed, respected, not labelled, and loved. 

An African proverb says: “Where fraternity reigns, each person becomes the guardian of the other’s well-being, and work ceases to be a burden and becomes a shared mission.” This is our African wisdom.