Services offered by Church, NGOs

JOHOR BAHRU(Herald Malaysia): Peter Barnabas, Chairman of the Episcopal Commission of Migrants and Itinerants of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei shared that when it comes to rendering services to migrants, the Catholic Church in Malaysia focuses more on pastoral care, besides coordinating formation programmes, case management and networking with NGOs.

Global Shepherds shared that their focus is on advocacy. Members from different ECMI countries also took the opportunity to share on their responses. The issues highlighted varied from pastoral care, advocacy, handling unaccompanied children in refugee camps, and running urban refugee centres, language classes and issues pertaining to foreign spouses.

We ended the day with the presentation of ICMC’s operational activities in Asia. In Malaysia, the focus is on combating sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) among refugees and asylum seekers. Pakistan is focusing on a wider range of health issues, legal protection, education, advocacy on child protection, services to gender based violence, sanitisation and water pumps and livelihood.

Article reproduced from Herald Malaysia online