As part of the fortieth anniversary of the signing of the “Cartagena Declaration” (1984), one of the most important legal instruments of recent decades in terms of protection and solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Embassy of Chile to the Holy See has organized a conference to give a voice to refugees and displaced people. On Tuesday the 2nd July 2024, at the Palace of San Calixto, together with several Catholic organizations, such as the Jesuit Refugee Service and Caritas International, they addressed the challenges of the migratory context and formulated recommendations for governments in the development of the Action Plan of Chile 2024-2034.
The activity was divided into two groups. The first panel discussed the context and future prospects of the Cartagena +40 process, with the participation of the Ambassador of Chile to the Holy See, the Director for Migration of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UNHCR representative in Italy, Holy See and San Marino, the Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis, the Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
In the second panel they focused on the contribution of refugees and displaced persons, the Church and civil society in this process, considering the experience of accompaniment of the JRS national offices in Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador and of the Jesuit Migrant Service of Chile (SJM Chile); as well as the regional experience of JRS LAC, Caritas LAC, the Jesuit Network with Migrants (RJM LAC) and the CLAMOR Network, the latter represented by Beatriz Calixto, delegate of the Franciscan Network for Migrants of the Americas (RFM) .
In her speech, Beatriz stated that the Franciscan Family, inspired by St Francis of Assisi, gave priority to the care of the Common Home and the poor. Starting from this, she called for “the protection of people displaced by natural disasters and the negative effects of climate change“, and at the same time denounced “the environmental degradation caused by monoculture and extractivism; a reality that forces States to respond to both internal and cross-border environmental displacement“.
At the end of her speech, the representative of the RFM and the CLAMOR Network asked States to recognize that forced displacement and climate change in the region are linked to an extractive model that expropriates, degrades territories, and limits the right to a healthy environment. In light of this, it was recommended to include disaster-related displacement and the adverse effects of climate change as an objective cause in itself in Article 3 of the Declaration.
The organizations delivered to the Chilean Government a document with several recommendations, which includes the elements proposed in the three thematic consultations of April, May and June, for the negotiation of the Declaration and the construction of the Chilean Action Plan, which will be held in Geneva in second half of 2024.