A hefty document on “Migrants and refugees. Challenges and opportunities” will be submitted by Tomáš Boček, special representative of the General Secretary of the Council of Europe for Migration and Refugees, as part of the 2017 “Meetings about the religious dimension of intercultural dialogue”, opening in Strasbourg at 4.00 pm today. The document, issued by the Council of Europe, intends to “take stock of the on-going debate on religions and migration” prompted by the fact that “religion has multiple dimensions in the area of migration”, first and foremost the dimension of humanitarian aids: “The money spent by some religious organisations in international aids is the same as, or even higher than, the money spent by lay humanitarian NGOs”. The second dimension is the “resilience factor” that religion and spirituality are for fleeing people, in helping bear the burden of pain and “ease social inclusion”. So, “a balancing act needs to be done between overemphasising or doing completely without” the migrants’ religious identity “to help them take roots in a new country. The document also mentions that “even religious leaders have sometimes been critical” of forced migration: “Understanding and practicing the regulatory principles of a religion” always depend on the people who embrace it.