At the end of 2019, the RJM constituted a unique region in all of South America (RJM SURAM), especially due to the size and extent of the Venezuelan exodus. Which required further deepening our network dynamism and attention to all the flows present in the different territories (Internal displacement in Colombia, the most invisible flows such as Haitian, Cuban and extra continental, vulnerable migrations of a more socioeconomic nature in the southern cone, etc.)

Roberto Jaramillo SJ, President of the CPAL, has confirmed the appointment of the new coordination of the SURAM region; Oscar Calderón Barragán will assume the coordination and the institutional framework for the installation of the coordination will be the JRS LAC. Oscar assumes the challenge of coordinating the RJM SURAM integrated with his regional leadership functions of JRS LAC, which he will continue to develop.

Oscar Javier Calderón Barragán is a humanitarian worker with more than 16 years of experience in peacebuilding, violence prevention, and accompaniment of displaced people, migrants, and refugees for the protection of their fundamental rights, and integration in host communities, promoter of reconciliation processes. For 11 years, he worked in the Jesuit Refugee Service, first in Colombia, in Cúcuta, and since September 2019 as regional director of JRS-LAC. He has teaching, research experience in issues related to human rights, international humanitarian law, prevention of violence, forced migration, and refugees, his university training is as a Lawyer, and he has a Master’s degree in territorial government and Public management from the Pontifical University Javeriana from Bogotá.

The SURAM region – which encompasses the entire subcontinent of South America – has a co-responsible coordination team in the leadership of the planning, strategy, and actions of the RJM. (know more about RJM teams)

The challenges of the migration context in the region increase its complexity. This has to do both with the dynamics of the flows and violations of the rights of forced migrants, (with the growing trend of stigmatization of migration, with the restrictive response, arbitrary approach, and the focus on national security and sovereignty that prevails in migration policies with crude expressions in the closure of borders and militarization. Which in turn expose migrants to greater risk, with protection gaps and the weakening of asylum systems, etc.). As well as the causes that generate the different exoduses (the tremendous democratic deficits, poverty and growing inequality, a predatory and criminal development model with the common home, public and private violence – many times in collusion – in its different expressions, the persecution and denial of diversity, and a long, etc.). The COVID 19 has reinforced the inequality and denials of access to rights; this framework also offers new paths and opportunities for profound social transformation.

The new coordination and its teams have clear challenges in the task they assume, among others: That the people we accompany are and occupy the centrality of the network discernment processes; grow in intersectoral work (the RJM summons not the only specialist works on migration and refuge, but also Universities, Parishes, Social Centers, Media, other educational networks, etc.). In addition, the alliances in the Church and civil society (convinced that alone we could not), favor innovation and creativity so that the network integrates into institutional planning and is sustainable.

We thank Oscar and the JRS LAC regional office, as well as the SURAM coordination team, for the willingness to assume the new leadership in the region. We wish the greatest success in the task, aware that there is only one sense: that of being a network for more mission, and only one way that involves the involvement and co-responsibility of all the people and institutions that are part of this great network family.

The Jesuit Network with Migrants in the CPAL network that for more than 20 years articulates and favors synergies between people, networks, and institutions of all sectors and territories of the Society of Jesus (and allies) as an expression of the Apostolate of Forced Migration in the continent. Accompanying the most vulnerable displaced people, migrants and refugees is an apostolic priority of the Jesuits in Latin America and the Caribbean, and throughout the world.

The defense of the right to migrate and the right not to migrate – also facing the causes that generate our exodus in the continent in the sending countries – is a horizon for accompaniment, research, and advocacy. As for dimensions of the work of a network that is interprovincial and intersectoral, together with the proposal of a Culture of Hospitality as a path towards Reconciliation. The basis of the commitment to a comprehensive reception in migratory transit, especially at borders, and in-destination communities. The protection, the differential approach, the full access to human rights in an increasingly complex context, demand and guide the need for articulation within the Society and the alliance with networks and organizations of the Church, of other churches, and civil society.

Through RJM LAC