Connecting the World: A Look at the Global Refugee Highway
by Kaisa Golding, RHP Global Coordinator
It was in October of 2019, after a long day of moving house, that I picked up my phone to check my emails. I had recently become involved with the RHP network in Oceania, and we were in the final stages of preparing for our first roundtable in Sydney. The email was titled ‘RHP Global formal re-set meeting: registration link.’ Squished between my two sleeping children, I tried to make sense of the email. It seemed that a gentleman named Gordon Showell-Rogers had invited me to attend a meeting in Thailand to help set the new direction of RHP Global.
This email was a little over four years ago. And so much has happened since then. I attended the meetings in Thailand, where I had the privilege of meeting RHP representatives from around the globe. These extraordinary people had been part of the RHP journey over the last 20 years, some from the earliest days of the founding of the network. I was the newest arrival to the scene and had yet to fully grasp the overall length and breadth of the global network. However, what I did grasp was exciting and determined and clearly necessary. In 2010, the number of forcibly displaced had been 43.7 million. By 2020 this had doubled to 82.4 million. It was obvious that more needed to be done.
The outcome of these meetings was the formation of a new global leadership team, made up of representatives from each RHP region. This new leadership team was tasked with deciding how - on the global level – RHP, across regions, could become more effective in helping to find solutions to the growing refugee crisis.
And then the Pandemic hit. And as often is the case in ministry, the new team needed to pivot, to remain flexible and adaptable and to find new ways of getting the job done. So, a schedule was set, to meet online once a fortnight for approximately one hour. This went on for the first few months. Once a more clearly defined strategy was outlined, the meetings were moved to once per month - always with someone getting up in the middle of the night or making time in the middle of a busy day. The team remained faithful for two years to this schedule. And over the two years a direction of travel was set, and a new vision and values were outlined.
From the start, it was unanimously agreed that for this to truly work, full-time staff would be needed: someone who could be thinking of RHP initiatives every day. In August 2022 I started in this role, seconded from a Finnish mission organisation (Finnish Lutheran Overseas Mission – FLOM).
And God has been faithful. Once the decision was made to hire full-time staff, the work began in earnest. In early 2023, Matthieu Volet joined the team as a joint RHP / World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) posting, to work as Refugee Advocacy Officer in Geneva. And in August, my husband, Simon, also joined the global team.
One year later, RHP has five working groups ranging from Education in Emergency to Trauma Care. We are establishing effective high-level advocacy into UN mechanisms through Matthieu’s posting, and there is a continued strengthening of collaboration within the regions, among those working on the ground. An increasing number of people are also willing to give time weekly to RHP initiatives, both in regional development as well as within the working groups. The annual World Refugee Sunday advocacy initiative continues as well, through the dedicated efforts of Jude Simion and his team in Australia.
There are several ways to get involved with the needs of the forcibly displaced around the world, through the RHP. You can join one of our working groups, in partnership with other regions, connect with Matthieu around advocacy or promote the annual World Refugee Sunday initiative (iwas.live). You can learn more about these global initiatives by contacting the North America leadership team, or you are most welcome to also contact me directly.
God cares so deeply about the forcibly displaced, and He has placed believers with a heart for the forcibly displaced all along these ‘highways’ that refugees travel. It is so encouraging to witness this hope in action. Imagine how much more we could achieve, if we all worked together, sharing our expertise, time and resources. As one ministry leader aptly stated earlier this year in Italy,
‘A slogan has been coined: We can’t help them all; but, we can help one! That is true, if we continue ‘each man for himself’. But, if we can start working as a network of persons that see the situation as a God given opportunity then we can certainly help many more!’
I look forward with anticipation to how God will guide our work in 2024, for His glory and for the sake of the forcibly placed.