Berkley Center

Religious entities play significant roles in the current forced migration crisis. These roles include innovative and experience based ideas to address flawed aspects of the humanitarian system, overall advocacy on behalf of refugees and migrants based on humanitarian and spiritual principles, direct action in refugee camps and communities, action in communities that refugees and migrants flee, and support for refugee integration in host countries. Further, assumptions about religion and the religious identity of refugees and migrants play an influential role in societal and policy debates surrounding the crisis, particularly in relation to security and violent extremism. Broadly, however, religious factors and contributions are poorly understood and insufficiently taken into account by policymakers and in think tank analyses of these issues. In each area measures to increase religious engagement could increase impact. Published in the Economics e-journal as a Global Solutions Paper, it was co-authored by Berkley Center Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall and Director Shaun Casey with Attalah Fitzgibbon, Azza Karam, Majbritt Lyck-Bowen, Ulrich Nitschke, Mark Owen, Isabel Phiri, Alberto Quatrucci, Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, Msgr. Robert Vitillo, and Erin Wilson.