Strategic Framework launch: Building Bridges, Inspiring Hope.

Yesterday, more than 160 people gathered behind their screens to celebrate and learn more about the Strategic Framework of JRS Europe for the 5-year period of 2026-2030. This important document dictates the guidelines that will permeate our work as an international organization for the next 5 years.

Advocacy and raising awareness constitutes one of the four programmatic priorities of our strategic framework. For JRS, advocacy is not an add-on to our work, nor something reserved for moments of crisis or policy negotiations. It is a core expression of who we are – also encapsulated in our moto-, because it stems directly from our commitment to human dignity and from our Jesuit vocation to promote justice through action.

Working with refugees and forcibly displaced people confronts us daily with a simple truth: human dignity is inherent to every human being; it is not granted or stripped of by documents, borders, or legal status. Our catholic and Jesuit tradition reminds us that to recognise dignity is to be willing to accompany—to walk alongside people, to listen deeply, and to allow their experiences to challenge our assumptions. Across Europe, however, systems, laws, and public debate too often deny this truth. Our responsibility, as staff of JRS Europe, is not only to respond to the consequences of exclusion, but to challenge the structures and narratives that produce it.

This responsibility is especially relevant in today’s context of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, the Returns Regulation and the safe country of origin list. While presented as a comprehensive response, the Pact reinforces approaches centred on containment and deterrence that will create limbo and suffering. As JRS Europe, we are called to engage persistently and strategically—to advocate for flexible, rights-based approaches that prioritise protection, dignity, and the full participation of refugees and forcibly displaced people in European societies.

This calls for advocacy that is both concrete and humane. Concrete, because it must aim for real systemic change: access to fair asylum procedures and adequate reception, to work and livelihoods, housing, education, and to meaningful participation in social and civic life. Humane, because our advocacy must always be people-centered, not speaking about figures or abstractions. Behind every policy position and every recommendation are lives, families, stories, dreams.

We work in a context where narratives of fear and exclusion have become normalised. Refugees are too often portrayed and labelled as threats rather than as neighbours, contributors, friends and persons. Challenging these narratives requires persistence and patience. Transformation is rarely immediate; it is the fruit of sustained presence, careful discernment, and faith in the possibility of change—of hearts, of minds, and of systems.

Our advocacy, therefore, has a transformative ambition. We seek not only to influence policies, but to help reshape the moral and social imagination of Europe. This requires courage, consistency, and humility: listening to displaced people themselves, amplifying their voices, and ensuring we do not speak about them without speaking with them.

So our call to action is the following, not only for our staff and volunteers but also for partners and like-minded human beings who wish to walk on the same path as we do:

• claim advocacy as part of your responsibility.
• speak with clarity and compassion.
• question narratives that dehumanise people.
• bring the realities you witness into our collective voice. This is our strength.
• and commit, over time, to building systems that reflect the dignity we defend.

Let’s move forward with advocacy that is principled and persistent— rooted in accompaniment, guided by and seeking justice, and animated by hope.

This is the role JRS Europe chooses to play in Europe today and the new Strategic Framework gives us the direction.