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Doris Peschke brings European perspective to IRP Committee
Doris Peschke
Photo: Carol Fouke-Mpoyo
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Proposed new directives on the asylum process could reduce refugee protection drastically across Europe.
Working for their defeat is among challenges facing Doris Peschke, General Secretary of the Churches' Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME) and a member of the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program Committee.
IRP welcomed Peschke in 2002, meeting a goal of the 2000 CWS restructure that all program committees include international representatives. She was joined this February by a second international representative, Vivi Akakpo of the All Africa Conference of Churches. "While our agencies have known each other for many years through the World Council of Churches," said Peschke, participation in IRP's 12-member program body "is a unique opportunity for closer cooperation. We are seeing a linking of issues and joining to develop responses."
In particular, she said, she would like to see U.S., European and African churches work together more closely on protection of African refugees and asylum seekers. For example, a tri-continental network of airport chaplains "could help a lot of stranded people" who were refused permission to board, she suggested.
Commented Joe Roberson, CWS/IRP Program Director, "The international representatives assist us in seeing the different perspec-tives that are a part of refugee, immigrant and migration issues, taking us beyond our U.S.-centered focus." Said IRP Committee Chair Mary Kuenning Gross, "Doris provides insight into how Europe's churches and governments are dealing with these issues. She is a strong advocate for the oppressed."
In turn, Peschke said she has benefited from CWS' experience with public policy advocacy and refugee resettlement, which "has been used very little in Europe since the 1970s and is just now picking up again. Experience with resettlement was lost," Peschke said.
A native of Hanover, Germany, Peschke studied theology and supported the anti-apartheid movement in Germany and as an intern in the Geneva, Switzerland-based World Council of Churches' Program to Combat Racism.
In 1989, she served as a monitor of Namibia's first democratic elections, returning in 1994 for the granting of independence to Namibia's Walvis Bay.
Peschke served the Protestant Church in Hess and Nassau as Secretary for Development with particular focus on Africa, Asia and Latin America, leaving five years ago to take up her current responsibilities in Brussels, Belgium.
As CCME General Secretary, she is responsible for engaging European churches' advocacy for refugee protection and respect for diversity, particularly in the European Union and its 25 member nations.
Founded in 1964, the CCME is an organization of Protestant and Orthodox churches and ecumenical councils in 16 countries. It maintains contacts with church partners in Denmark and Russia and with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Istanbul. CCME's mandate includes the whole area of migration and integration, refugees and asylum, along with racism and xenophobia.
Meet Doris Peschke and you quickly will be impressed with her clear, focused commitment to justice. She speaks rapidly and with few pauses, her sentences peppered with facts, figures and policy particulars. Both her smile and her determination are unwavering.
In a recent interview, she described the CCME's work to mobilize Europe's churches against the proposed asylum procedures, likely to be voted by the European Parliament no later than June.
These "lowest common denominator" requirements for hearings, interpretation facilities and legal representation along with "accelerated procedures" for use by border guards "could keep asylum seekers from getting a proper hearing and result in real refugees being returned to danger," she said.
Especially controversial are provisions that would make it the norm rather than the exception to return asylum seekers to their country of transit. "Travel routes would become more important than the reason for seeking refuge," she said. "Asylum seekers first would need to prove they can't get protection elsewhere."
If the new directives pass, she vowed to "continue the struggle country by country. We can't force refugees into the woods and into irregular situations because we don't provide protection. I do have hope that if church leaders take this up, it will have an impact."
The CCME also is working for respect for "irregular" migrants' rights and against human trafficking, and sponsors an active "Uniting in Diversity" campaign. "Minorities" have become the majority in several denominations in Europe, Peschke said, and "many new denominations not formerly known in Europe are springing up, including African independent churches and Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox churches. We are seeking to build church unity while respecting each person's need to pray in his or her own language."
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