Promoting a culture of peace, the foundations of the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF) are respect and unconditional love for all beings.
Celebrated today, September 21, the International Day of Peace is the date established by the United Nations (UN) in 1981, with the goal of enabling actions that promote the end of conflicts between peoples.
In 2021, the theme of the date is “Recovering better for an equitable and sustainable world,” a process that the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF) works with daily with their actions in the management of five shelters for Venezuelan refugees in the State of Roraima, with the support of the UNHCR.
Victims of a process of exclusion prior to the socioeconomic crisis that Venezuela has been going through over the last few years, the indigenous people from that country must face innumerable obstacles to build a peaceful life of dignity, be it in Brazil or in other countries where they are seeking shelter. At this time, there are more than two thousand indigenous people being taken care of in the shelters under the management of the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF)
The Lasting Solutions Sector of the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF), together with the UNHCR, in Operation Welcome, provides a set of humanitarian interventions to achieve these goals.
There are vocational courses, learning Portuguese and information technology, entrepreneurship workshops, and even a leadership training school (in partnership with the Insikiran Institute), the objective of which is to train leaders and representatives for the Warao and E’ñepa ethnic groups, among others, capable of understanding their rights and duties in this challenging scenario of rebuilding their lives in Brazil.
According to Friar Thomas, “it is another branch of service; the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF) seeks to build an environment of protection and assistance that, through a multi-functional team, assists and monitors the different levels of vulnerability of the shelter population and works to connect these needs and individuals with the available public assistance and social services network. It also tries to strengthen the community foundations by creating local committees and support for maintaining the traditional culture.”
The monk states that the institution takes the principles of the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF) into situations on the planet where there is suffering. “Unconditional service to all beings, a culture of peace, respect and love are the major foundations of each action,” he says.
Such service has made it possible to carry out more than 20 missions in places of conflict and situations where the peoples are extremely vulnerable, such as in the Middle East and Africa, besides the more than five years of work in the Roraima Humanitarian Mission.
“It was also a function of the respect and adherence to the universal principles of human rights of the Sphere movement in Brazil, of which the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF) became a focal point of the Sphere Movement in Brazil and translated the latest version of the Sphere Handbook into Portuguese, helping to disseminate the global humanitarian response standards that guarantee, at different levels, the quality of assistance and the human dignity of the people being assisted in humanitarian crises,” he recalls.
Finally, Friar Thomas highlights a saying that defines very well the service carried out by the organization in its search for implementing peace: “Only Love can heal pain.”
