According to last year's UNHCR data, there are more than 70 million people in the world who had been forcibly displaced, including 26 million refugees, 41.3 million internally displaced, and 3.5 millino asylum seekers. Caring for these most vulnerable people in the world is an issue that Pope Francis had placed at the centre of his pontificate, and during the novel coronavirus pandemic, he again called on the world to pay attention to refugees.

As part of our series of interview about the World in the Time of the Corona, we talk with Thomas Smolich, the International Director for the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), about the situation on the “edge of humanity” at this moment. JRS is an international Catholic association which provided care for refugees, displaced persons, and migrants, and advocates their rights in line with the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

In this unprecedented time of a pandemic, it kind of seems that the world as it had been before the outbreak has been kind of forgotten. Everyone is focusing on themselves, their health, their families and communities. Headlines no longer talk about people suffering in places like Syria, or any other place that needs emergency assistance. Since JRS works with refugees and other people in need in more than 50 countries around the world, what would be your message at this moment?

The one thing I would want to say to people is just that we are all in this together. We may think that by closing our doors, and by locking things up, by putting up our borders, that we can keep the virus out – but as a matter of fact, we can’t, the virus goes where it wants to go. We can slow it down, we can delay it, but it’s moving through the world.

And in the same way, that if we work together to deal with it, we are more likely to be successful. And that’s would want to say that working together comes out of our shared humanity, that caring for those who are most in need at this time – whether they live next door or around the block, or in a country halfway around the world – is the way to best deal with this, because it is the way that we are most human, in working together.

I understand people’s fears, I understand the inclination to turn inward, but our best way to move forward is to move together.

History shows that when disease and catastrophes hit, the most affected are the ones who had been the most vulnerable even before such events. Your organisation is still on the ground, helping people in places like the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Balkans. What are you seeing happening there right now?

The impact of Covid-19 is different in different parts of the world right now. Certainly the way it has broken on the shore in Europe, in North America, and in China. But in much of the developing world, where the needs of refugees and migrants and strongest, we are still kind of waiting.

So in a sense, there is another crisis which has happened there. Most countries in Africa and in Asia closed their borders, they are doing lockdowns and social distancing, to try and stop the virus from really taking root in their countries. But as we know, when people who live from day to day don’t have a job from day to day, bad things happen.

So we are certainly seeing a rise in hunger. I saw predictions yesterday that 265 million people – doubling from before – could go to bed hungry each night because of this. And that’s even before the virus hits. And then, presuming it does come to places in the world like Syria, like Bangladesh, parts of Africa… Again, we don’t know, but certainly the potential for poor communities, communities without health care, communities that can’t do social distancing, the potential for this virus to spread is phenomenal.

I can tell you what we are doing, and what probably other agencies are doing. Our most important thing to remember is that we walk with refugees, we will continue to do our mission. But right now we have to adapt to Covid-19, adapt to realities. So one thing we are doing more now is food assistance, medical assistance, rent assistance… Helping people with their daily needs, and that is something that needs to be done right now.

Second, we continue the services that need to be continued. So in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, we run a number of shelters, and we need to keep running those shelters. We protect our staff and our residents as well as we can from the virus, but we need to keep doing that. We have special needs students who maybe can’t go to school right now but their parents don’t know how to handle their special needs, whether that might be cerebral palsy or epilepsy or other issues like that. So we continue to go and help those parents.

We moved lessons online. WhatsApp has become a huge means of doing teaching in this situation. So it’s important to meet immediate needs, and then to continue what we can continue. Because this will pass, this will end, and the needs of girls to stay in school will still be there, the needs for education will still be there, the needs for livelihoods, for people being able to work and to provide for their families will still be there. So it’s about minimizing what we can’t do, maximizing what we can do, and always keeping an eye towards accompanying people into the future.

There is a real emergency here going on, and it’s the fact that for people who depend upon their daily wage, without their daily wage it’s getting very grim in terms of basics like food, shelter, or medical care.

One of the important pillars of Pope Francis’ pontificate is the issue of climate change and environment protection, something he talked about from his second encyclical in 2015 about the importance of caring for our common home, up to his 2020 post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia.

The world is currently combating a zoonotic virus, and we are seeing increasing levels of human activity which is destroying the environment. How important are the Pope’s messages at this time?

I think Pope Francis has been an extraordinary leader during this time. Not just during Covid-19, but during his whole pontificate, and I think he leads as a pastor. He leads based on his experience of talking to men and women all over the world, listening to their needs, and in a sense lifting those needs up and inviting all of us – world leaders, people in other parts of the world – to say “Hey how do we attend to this reality?”

I think one of the most important images he has used during Covid-19, just before Easter, is this image that we are all in the boat together. It’s not a question of the disciples, in that scene, when they are caught in the storm, and Jesus is asleep. And Pope Francis has this great image, he says it’s not that they don’t have faith, they ask “Don’t you care?”

And I think what Pope Francis is saying is that God cares very deeply, and we have to care as well. God can’t be the only one caring, we also have to care. We have to care for one another, we have to care for our environment, we have to respect the needs and the hopes of poor people and rich people. And I think that’s his message, that God certainly cares, and we have to care.

One of the amazing things right now is that air pollution is down, the skies are cleaner, people may have to wear masks because of Covid-19, but the air pollution is down. Can we learn from this? Can we learn from the fact that while this is going on, nature is healing in other ways. How do we respect one another?

And his message is, as in a sense God’s representative as the Pope, he is conveying to us that God’s care is with us at this time. The invitation is to really care for one another and care for our earth. And if Covid-19 is teaching us anything, it’s that when the earth is under stress and people are under stress, bad things happen. And caring for aone another is a way for good things to happen.

You mentioned this image of Pope Francis standing in an empty square joining people around the world in prayer. Although a fundamental part of religion is the communal aspect, with people gathering and sharing a communal experience, that extraordinary image also serves as a message for these times, and in my opinion it may have even resonated even more this way.

I’ve read almost everything Pope ha said over the past weeks, and I have been listening to some of his morning homilies and his mass. I think he has become a voice of God’s presence. God is present in the absence of so many things right now. I think of St. Peters’s Square, which is now totally empty, I think of all of the people who depend upon pilgrims for their livelihood.

And that’s what he is talking about, in the midst of this emptiness which is earth-shattering and heart-shattering, he is here to say God is here, and God will help us, God will guide us, and say “This is what the next should be, this is what the next step can be.” It’s that deep connection that he has with us, that he has with people, the images of him standing in empty St. Peter’s in the dark, a candle here and there, draws in. Because we know he cares, and his care comes from his relationship with God, the relationship that he is inviting us to share.

The Pope has encouraged believers in his messages to work for the greater good, and said that this is not the time to be indifferent, selfish, that this is not the time for divisions. He mentioned humanitarian crises going on around the globe, called for debt relief, and prayed for all the refugees around the world.

The issue of refugees and migrants has also been one of the key issues of his pontificate, ever since his first trip to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013 until the present day. And you have met Pope Francis several times. In terms of the work of JRS, how important is it to have such explicit support from the Pope?

It’s profoundly important. I don’t have words for how important it is. As you’re talking about that Urbi et Orbi – he specifically mentioned the situation in Lesbos, the Syrian refugees and the ongoing crisis there – these are places we are working in. So for him to notice and to say This is where Urbi et Orbi needs to be this year – we were deeply moved.

The image which comes to me, in the Gospel, when he calls Matthew away from the tax collectors, Matthew gets up and follows him, and that night he throws a dinner for all these unseemly people. And he says “I didn’t come for the perfect, for everybody who have their act together – I’ve come to heal the sick, I’ve come to be with people on the margins.”

And that’s what Pope Francis is doing, he is saying that’s where God is to be found right now. If we don’t include them, our understanding of God is not a true understanding.

But indifference is still here. We hear a lot of talk about solidarity, but it seems that very few understand the essence and the meaning of that word. We remember Pope’s words from Lampedusa, when he asked “Adam, where are you?” This is the first question that God addresses to man after sin. Where is man today?

Well we’ll find out. This is not the moment to know. Because we’re in the midst of a crisis. And as we all know, this is a difficult time for everybody. No matter where you are in the world or where you are in the socio-economic ladder, it’s a difficult time for everyone.

What I have seen is people all over the place talking about the importance of maintaining connections – they are reaching out to friends, staying in touch with loved ones, doing small things, little acts of love, little kindnesses. The question will be “When this subsides, can we put this into practice, beyond our own apartment, beyond our own house, beyond our own family?” And I think that’s where the invitation will be.

It will also take leaders, leadership, to do this. Whether our leaders can do this, I don’t know – certainly Pope Francis will be there. We’ve seen incredible acts of kindness and generosity. If that spirit can grab us – if we can see that what is in my best interest is actually in our best interest, then we can make a difference here.

And things don’t happen overnight. I don’t expect that one day we will all wake up and “solidarity” will be the first word on our lips. I’m not saying that. But can we reflect on this? Can our leadership? Can we come back to a world which is different? I don’t know. But I hope we can, and voices like Francis will remind us that not only should we, but that we can if we want to.

You mentioned leaders. Pope Francis once said that he was scared by statements which begin with “us first,” and warned that sovereignism equals isolation. Some other modern leaders talk about Christian values but for their selfish political reasons they use this to spread ideas which are completely opposite of Jesus’ teachings and the values that you talk about. How does one respond to that?

I’m going to draw a distinction between being a person of hope and an optimist. An optimist is somebody who thinks it’s going to be better tomorrow. That the sun is going to shine up and everything is going to be fine. Optimism is not realism, is not accurate, is not true.

But hope says it’s not going to happen tomorrow, and it may not happen next week – but I believe, and I will work, and I will try to make sure that I do what I can so that the world moves in this direction.

There are a number of world leaders who are taking advantage of this in the short term. But I also have to believe that over the long haul, as Martin Luther King would say, the arc of time bends towards justice, we are ultimately moving in that direction – even though what happens today or tomorrow may not look that way.

And I have to say that because my experience of coming to know refugees in my time with JRS… People have all sorts of reasons to say that it’s never going to get any better, and people have lived through some horrible things. And yet there is resilience. I think they are fundamentally hopeful. Even in spite of everything that has happened to them they have hope. They have hope that God will be with us as we move through this.

So I’m not optimistic for what happens two days from now or two weeks from now. But I am hopeful that as we reflect on this, and as leaders come out of this experience, as this experience forms us and changes us, and in a sense a generation of leaders that come out of this, I am hopeful that the arc of who we are bends towards solidarity and justice and love and real companionship.

Climate change and the impact that humans have had on the environment are increasingly becoming reasons for forced migrations globally. World’s decision-makers often ignore this issue, and climate refugees still aren’t recognised as a separate category. How do you see this in your line of work?

Let me nuance a bit what you have said. We are beginning to see people who are unquestionably climate refugees. The most obvious example of this are people living on Pacific islands who can’t live on their islands any more because either their islands are being flooded over because of the change in sea level, or because there is no more potable water. So we are certainly seeing this.

I would say that at this moment more people are probably displaced because of conflicts, but I would also say that more and more of these conflicts have a climate change base to them, that climate change is playing a larger role in the conflicts that are going on.

Most conflicts are over resources. Where there is drought, where people can no longer grow what they used to grow, where people are starving because the crops have failed – those are the triggers for the kinds of conflicts that continue to force people to flee.

I agree that climate change is the game changer right now, and we are going to see more and more of forced displacement having an explicit – not just an implicit, or maybe just a piece of it – an explicit climate change dimension to it.

If you look at the situation in the Sahel, in Africa, the impact of climate change on the instability in those regions is obvious. People always ask would Syria have gone to war if the government had responded differently to three years of drought. We will never know. But clearly the drought was a piece of that picture.

Water is going to be more and more an issue of conflict and people not being able to stay where they live because of lack of water. So clearly the climate reality is becoming a more dominant one, we can’t pretend it’s not there any more.

We can’t deny what happened to the climate because of Covid-19 – all of the sudden the air is better, all of the sudden there’s less carbon dioxide… What we do makes a difference, and it makes a difference in people’s lives – and we can’t deny that any more.

Europe and the European Union are a continent and a bloc which are based on the rule of law and solidarity. Just before the pandemic, Greece – a member country of the European Union which has been the first stop for refugees coming from the Middle east for years – had suspended the right to seek asylum for a month in the wake of the crisis on the Greek-Turkish border. Europe itself is faced with several challenges which are directly related to the pandemic, but what lies in the future is the issue of reforming its common asylum and migrant policy. How much are you focused on this?

That’s one of the things we are most concerned about. This is something that came up in a meeting I was part of, with UNHCR a couple of days ago, with a number of faith-based organizations, there’s a new Assistant to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a woman named Gillian Triggs, she just started and she was in Australia doing a lot of work on behalf of refugees there. And she commented on this phenomenon, specifically of countries and the interchange of Covid-19 and asylum policies, policies of dealing with refugees and so on.

I think it’s important to say that yes this is an emergency situation which we can’t pretend isn’t there, we can’t pretend everything is the same as it had been previously.

My concern, and concerns of others, is that there are countries who are taking advantage of this emergency situation to undercut rule of law, to undercut basic human rights, to undercut the agreements that all of us in a sense have made – perhaps at a time when it was easier to make them – but are there and really respect human rights and dignity.

But I’m going to be careful here, because I’m not European. I will just comment that in my own country, in the US, certainly some of the decisions that have been made vis-a-vis people on our southern border, people seeking asylum and not being able to come into the country, the decision made by the administration a couple of days ago to suspend green cards – legal residency – applications here.

One could say that this is taking advantage of the Covid-19 situation to change basic understandings of our human rights and our responsibilities to forcibly displace people. Yes, people take advantage of this.

In terms of JRS, our own advocacy policies – we’ve all got things that we think are very important right now, but we are really trying to focus on maintaining protection, to stop any sort of deportation, and to include refugees and migrants in any sort of an equal access policy to any health care, hygiene, health services.

This is not a time to be changing policies, this is not a time to be moving needles, this is not a time to be excluding people more. If we don’t do this together, it’s only going to get worse.