Vatican official, at UN, emphasizes ‘right to remain in one’s homeland’

July 25, 2017

A Vatican official addressed a UN meeting on migrants and development and emphasized “the right to remain in one’s homeland in dignity, peace, and security.”

Father Michael Czerny, SJ, undersecretary of the Section for Migrants and Refugees of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said on July 24 that “no one should ever be forced to leave his or her home due to lack of development or peace. The right to remain helps to focus the international community’s efforts on its prior obligation to ensure the sustainable and integral human development of all people in their place of origin.”

Father Czerny repeated Pope Francis’s call to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate migrants. The Vatican official said that migrants have the responsibility “to respect the values, traditions and laws of the community that takes them in,” adding that the local poor must not be forgotten:

The communities that receive them must be given adequate assistance to integrate them in a way that does not leave the local poor behind; one way to do this is through the adoption of development and donor policies that set aside a percentage of the direct assistance provided to migrants and refugees for local infrastructure and for the benefit of local families and communities experiencing economic and social disadvantages.

 

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Further information:

• Contributions of migrants and diaspora to all dimensions of sustainable development (Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations)