There are 9.5 million more internally displaced persons (IDPs) than last year. The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) works alongside refugees who have historically fallen through the cracks of support and been ignored by their own governments. The new coronavirus challenges could result in the needs of IDPs receding further into the background, according to the JRS in Iraq. In Afghanistan there are 55,000 IDPs in over fifty informal settlements in Kabul, now fearing evacuation and the loss of daily wage jobs and whatever assets they have secured prior to the pandemic. JRS accompanies, serves, and defends IDPs in fourteen countries through education, psycho-social support, peacebuilding, pastoral activities, training in modern agricultural techniques, plus mediation to settle land disputes and other conflicts. This is part of a three-year campaign to draw attention to the current limits and challenges and call for long term solutions. See

Cox’s Bazaar is the largest refugee settlement on earth. One million Rohingya refugees, half of whom are children, have been cramped together in these camps since 2017, after they were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar to escape horrific violence. Now they face yet another threat to their lives with Coronavirus. The potential death toll is unimaginable in the densely packed camps. Social distancing is not an option. Refugees live in cramped conditions in makeshift bamboo and tarpaulin shelters. Access to clean water is severely limited, so the hygienic practice of regular hand-washing is almost impossible to achieve. The government and food distribution agencies are developing new ways to distribute food that minimise person-to-person contact. Rohingya volunteers are educating camp communities about the importance of hand-washing. Pray for good communication between the agencies focused on essential healthcare and food distribution to curb the spread of coronavirus.

In many places, police not only fail to protect people in poverty from violence, but they are violent predators themselves. Millions of the most vulnerable people in the world live in fear of police who extort bribes and brutalise innocent citizens. This has increased during coronavirus curfews. In Kenya it is easy for a corrupt or incompetent police officer to falsely accuse and imprison or even kill an innocent person. As measures have been put in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus, there has been a spike in police abuse while enforcing the night curfew. The government’s independent policing oversight authority has documented at least 35 cases of police brutality in connection to the curfew enforcement, including twelve deaths. Other agencies report at least one death a night in the communities which the justice centres monitor.

Manufacturing clothes was once a pillar of Gaza’s economy, with 900 factories employing 36,000 Palestinians. But the industry collapsed in 2007 when Hamas seized control of Gaza and Israel banned the export of clothing from Gaza to Israel or the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Ziad Qassem’s 25 years as a tailor seemed worthless in the cruel blockade: unemployed, debt piling up, worried how he would provide for his wife and five children. Coronavirus came to the rescue. Demand for masks and protective gear soared worldwide. Gaza garment factories are flooded with new orders from Israel, ordinarily seen by much of Gaza’s Palestinian population as the enemy. Israeli rights groups have called for the permanent easing of restrictions that govern entry in and out of the Gaza enclave, home to some two million people, so that the economy can function more normally even after the pandemic. See