JRS was founded in November 1980 by Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ, the then Superior General of the Society of Jesus, to respond to the plight of Vietnamese refugees fleeing their war-ravaged homeland.

Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese fled their homes, setting out in overcrowded boats across the South China Sea. Many did not survive the journey; they were killed by pirates or drowned because of storms and rough seas. Fr Arrupe felt compelled to act. He called on theJesuits “to bring at least some relief to such a tragic situation”.

Fr Arrupe wrote to over 50 Jesuit provinces regarding the situation, recognising that theJesuits, then numbering 27,000 men across the world, were well-placed to coordinate a global humanitarian response. As conflicts broke out in Central and Latin America, southeastern Europe, and across Africa, JRS rapidly grew from helping Vietnamese boat people in a few camps in Southeast Asia to working with refugees around the world.

Nearly 20 years after our founding, JRS was officially registered as a foundation of theVatican City State on 19 March 2000. JRS in Ukraine has been present in Lviv since 2008, it opened the safe house to welcome refugees arriving from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, Afghanistan and other countries.

Since December 2014, displaced people from the Crimean peninsula and from the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk began to arrive. All the people who sought shelter in Lviv were provided with accommodation, food, legal and spiritual-psychological assistance.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, JRS Ukraine used all of its resources to assist the population which had been displaced by the conflict. Nowadays, we can effectively respond to the needs of displaced people in the current situation, in particular, by providing shelter, humanitarian aid, psychosocial support and various assistance in integration into the local environment.