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In this week’s blog, Richard Kayumba reflects on mental health week and, in particular, the experience of being a refugee, having to flee your home in search of safety and the impacts this has on mental health.

Wars and becoming a refugee have many consequences on the physical and mental health of civilians and soldiers. ‘Death, injury, sexual violence, malnutrition, illness, and disability are some of the common physical consequences of war, while post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety are the emotional effects.

Many asylum seekers and refugees are survivors or escapee from these traumatic experiences. People escaping from such environment are convinced that when they reach their destinations, they will have a chance to live or to re-build new life and be able to heal these terrible wounds. 

However, nothing torments asylum seekers more than being informed that after their miraculous escape from near death situations, they’re unwanted by the country in which they have sought freedom. These torments are intensified by the anxiety of not knowing the outcome of their asylum application.  This goes from anxiety to depression once they are disappointed with a declined application following countless years of waiting for the Home Office’s decision.

From this stage onwards, a nightmare begins for asylum seekers, due to the inhumane treatment received during the time  prior to their deportation. At this stage, asylum seekers are living in extreme fear of what would happen to them once they are deported. At the same time, they are forced to live on the street by not having a place to stay. Also, this is a period when asylum seekers are made to frequent detention centres without committing any crime. To me, asylum-seeking is the worst thing one would wish his enemy and an asylum seeker’s deportation is equal to being sentenced to the death penalty.

One cannot describe how seeking asylum in the UK demolishes life. The  BMC International Health and Human Rights Report   identified 29 studies on long-term mental health with a total of 16,010 war-affected refugees. It revealed significant prevalence rates of depression and anxiety even in long-settled war refugees. Countries studied included Yugoslavia, the Middle East & Africa (Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan.)  Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam). 

‘Whilst preventing war trauma inflicted on refugees may be beyond the control of recipient countries, they can influence the post-migration challenges faced by incoming refugees by improving resettlement policies’, said Marija Bogic & Stefan Priebe, of Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry.

I’m sure that deep down the UK is aware that by refusing to take in refugees, or by reducing asylum seekers to dangers associated with deportation and other inhumane treatment ,she knows it breaches the 1951 Geneva Convention of which she is a party, and that she will change and comply. 

It would be doing a disservice to the Glasgow people who united to save refugees and succeeded against immigration enforcement officials who targeted them if this article ended without applauding their bravery. 
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 1 https://bmcinthealthhumrights.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12914-015-0064-9

Danny Sweeney is the Social Justice Coordinator at Justice & Peace Scotland and in our latest blog he reflects on the UK government's policy announcements at this week's opening of parliament.

“How many gifts God has bestowed upon us!” This declaration is part of the Passover Seder and is followed by a series of statements; “Had He brought us out of Egypt and not divided the Sea for us”, “Had He divided the Sea and not permitted us to cross on dry land”, “Had He permitted us to cross on dry land and not sustained us for forty years in the desert”. The seder continues asking the same question around being fed with manna, given the Torah, built the Temple. To each act those gathered respond “Even that would have been enough!”

I was reminded of this litany whilst watching the State Opening of Parliament. Whilst the pomp and ceremony was pared down due to COVID-19 this is still the time for the Westminster government to put its’ agenda “on show”. Sadly, we have seen far too much of that agenda in recent months, briefed out to the press ahead of today’s spectacle and the acclamation is not “that would have been enough”; but “how much further can we fall?” as we see the government set itself on a course which has no regard for the poor and vulnerable, no concern for justice and peace.

The abolition of the Department for International Development and abandoning the commitment to 0.7% of Gross National Income to be spent on international aid has seen a series of programmes committed to serving the poorest and most vulnerable globally slashed. How much further can we fall?

A “Policing” Bill which targets the rights of Traveller communities, along with seeking to outlaw protest and make a single person making “too much noise” against the law. A “Borders” Bill which involved consultation on a clumsy website which required those responding to accept a series of “false premises” about migration; framing asylum seekers as criminals and those being exploited by traffickers as the guilty party. The consultation was targeted to government supporters rather than to those who work with asylum seekers and refugees and no effort made to engage with those who have lived or current experience of the asylum system. Condemned already by all, from grassroots campaigners to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. How much further can we fall?

A Justice Bill which seeks to limit the ability of the courts to hold the government to account, a stated intention to break international obligations to disarmament and increase the size of the nuclear stockpile. Seeking to put democracy behind the paywall of either a passport or a driving license; targeting disproportionately the young and the poor who don’t have such things. Voter suppression in no uncertain terms. How much further can we fall?

At the end of the Seder there is Kos Hartza-ah (the cup of acceptance) which speaks of “the preservation and affirmation of hope”. For me there is very little hope with this government, and I hope like many others; I don’t plan to just accept it!

Dr Duncan MacLaren is a member of the Scottish Bishops’ Committee on Inter-religious Dialogue and in this week's blog he gives his personal reflection on the life and legacy of Fr Hans Kung.

The Swiss theologian, Fr Hans Küng, author of On Being a Christian, a magisterial attempt to ‘sell’ Christianity to the modern world and Infallible?, where he cast doubt on papal infallibility just before the reign of Saint John Paul II, died recently at the age of 93. These two books in a way encapsulate the man. On the one hand, he was a priest in good standing with the Church who railed against those priests who were messy around the altar and were not true to their vows, and, on the other, in his search for truth, he was often regarded as an irritant, to put it mildly, by the Vatican. 

Infallible? cost him his professorial chair in Catholic theology at Tübingen University in Germany though they made him a Professor in the Institute for Ecumenical Research instead. The case against him pursued by the Holy Office was led by a man whom he had made, years earlier, a professor at Tübingen, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, the then Prefect of what became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They made up soon after Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 at a lunch together in the Pope’s summer residence at Castel Sangolfo. They corresponded afterwards but never met again to discuss their disparate visions of the Church.

For the readers of this blog, their main interest in Hans Küng lies in his search for a Global Ethic, launched by the publication of his Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic in 1991. Ten years later shortly after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, he addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations with his vision of a global ethic that could lead the planet to peace with the world’s religions as major protagonists. He said,

"Globalization needs a global ethos, not as an additional burden, but as a basis and help for people, for civil society. Some political scientists predict a ‘clash of civilizations’ for the 21st century. Against this we set our different vision of the future; not simply an optimistic ideal, but a realistic vision of hope: the religions and cultures of the world, in interaction with all people of good will, can help to avoid such a clash, provided they realize the following insights: No peace among nations without peace among religions. No peace among religions without dialogue among religions. No dialogue among religions without global ethical standards. No survival of our globe in peace and justice without a new paradigm of international relations based on global ethical standards.” 

This is precisely why inter-religious dialogue, in which Küng participated passionately for many years, is so important for all of us in the Church. In the Global Ethic Institute at his beloved Tübingen University, he leaves a magnificent legacy, one which continues his search for a global common good found in the moral values of all great religious traditions in order to realign our world along ethical, more person-oriented and more compassionate lines. May Hans Küng, priest and prophet, rest in God’s peace.

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[1] Hans Küng, On the Dialogue of Civilizations, Address on 9^th November 2001 at the United Nations General Assembly.   Retrieved from   One of the Greatest Visionaries of Our Time - We Mourn the Death of Hans Küng. The Global Ethic Project lives on. - Weltethos Institut Tübingen (weltethos-institut.org)