By Joel Forster, Evangelical Focus. (Photo: mostafa meraji/Unsplash)
At its 2026 European meeting, the Refugee Highway Partnership will bring together churches and ministries working with forcibly displaced people. The focus this year is on the realities of children and young people.
Some 150 Christian ministries in Europe network together in the Refugee Highway Partnership (RHP), a movement that serves forcibly displaced people and connects them with Christian communities.
Like other networks that work thematically from a common Christian perspective, the RHP seeks to share resources, provide training and encouragement, and mobilise churches and Christian organisations to action.
“We are motivated by our Biblical Mandate and we believe prayer to be foundational to our movement and ministry”, the group says on its website.
The gathering (known as roundtable) of 2026 will happen in Málaga (south of Spain) between 23-27 March.
Evangelical Focus asked Whitney Gerdes, global education specialist at the International Association for Refugees (IAFR) and managing director of RHP Europe, about political trends in Europe regarding foreigners, the role of churches in welcoming displaced people, and who should attend the meeting. Gerdes has been living in Vienna (Austria) for almost two decades.
Question. How have you seen evolve the movement of Christians focusing on refugees and migrants in Europe after the pandemic?
Answer. The popularity of ministries or churches focusing on refugees has increased and decreased throughout the years, but I can confidently say that many have been focused on this group of people for years, and many have caught the vision for what God is doing in and among the forcibly displaced.
Since the pandemic, and even more since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, there have been an increasing number of European churches and ministries committed to walking alongside those forcibly displaced in their communities.