Port Moresby: The Catholic Bishops Conference (CBC) of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands has released an open letter to the Australian Parliament regarding their inability to resettle Manus/Nauru Asylum seekers and refugees.

The letter was presented by General Secretary of CBCPNGSI, Fr Giorgio Licini PIME, during a press conference held at 11am on Monday 19^th July 2021, at the CBC headquarters in Gordons. Panellists for the conference also included Migrants & Refugee Desk Director, Mr Jason Siwat, and Sr Mary McCarthy, Voluntary worker and Chaplain of POM General Hospital.

A Perspective from a Hazara Asylum Seeker from Afghanistan

With the expected departure of US and Australian forces from Afghanistan, it is seems that the country is returning to the era of the brutal Taliban regime. To sit with the Taliban now, after fighting them for 20 years is not only accepting their regime but also giving them legitimacy. This begs the question whether war was a means to testing heavy and modern weapons on a vulnerable and defenceless people.

Edmund Rice Centre calls on Australian PM Scott Morrison to #StepUp4ThePacific at Biden Climate Summit 

Several leading Australian and Pacific not-for-profit organisations, including the Edmund Rice Centre, have jointly called on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison today to step up Australia’s climate action targets ahead of the Biden Climate Summit to be held on 22 April. 

The organisations, also including the Pacific Conference of Churches, Oxfam Australia, Greenpeace Australia Pacific and the Climate Council, commissioned a full-page advertisement in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) urging Mr Morrison to ensure that Australian “emissions plummet to well below half of their current levels this decade”. 

It’s time for all communities to speak up for indigenous voice and dignity!

Edmund Rice Centre director, Mr Phil Glendenning AM has today issued a call for Australian communities that share a thirst for building right relations.
 
We are living in a time when so many societal injustices are being named and addressed in an effort to set right the underlying problems and preconceptions that sustain them. In many ways this is exciting and gives us hope for a better society. And yet time and again our nation has passed up on opportunities to take the first structural step to set right the injustices against the original peoples of these lands which today we call Australia.

Political and religious leaders in Australia have come out in strong support of today’s Open Letter from fifteen Pacific leaders to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, asking him to take urgent climate action ahead of the United Nations (UN) Climate Ambition Summit on 12 December 2020.