Seeking asylum means asking another country for protection. This means that the government of the country of origin is unable to ensure the security of the person which may result in exposure to persecution in case of return to the country. Thus, the “manifestly well-founded nature of the asylum application” must be justified, which must therefore be based on an explanation of the reasons for fearing persecution if returned to the country of which one is a national. In order to gather all the required information and take a proper decision on the asylum claim, caseworkers are required to apply the relevant legal instruments during the refugee status determination and the assessment of each case. Although it might seem like a complicated task, it is actually very simple as long as the caseworker follows specific rules. In this article, I am providing a few of the easiest ways to apply international and regional refugee law instruments in refugee status determination procedures. Whether you are an asylum caseworker with UNHCR or with the government, the following tips are useful and applicable.

When in doubt, re-read the refugee definition:

Before applying any legal instrument in the asylum context, it is crucial to be fully aware of the definition of a refugee, first in the 1951 Geneva Convention and then in other regional legal instruments like the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa or the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees which covers South America.

The 1951 Convention is the key legal instrument that directs the work of an asylum caseworker and especially the work of UNHCR and its partners. It defines a refugee as someone who ““owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” It is based on this definition that an asylum eligibility officer can take a decision on the refugee claim at hand and thus apply any other relevant legal instrument. People flee their countries for an infinity of reasons, which is also what makes the difference between a refugee or asylum seeker and a migrant. The first and most important element an asylum caseworker needs to focus on is the REASON why the asylum seeker left his/her country of origin. To make it even simpler, the first way to apply refugee law instruments in status determination interviews is to determine the convention grounds, in other words whether or not there is a nexus between the reason why the claimant left his/her country and one of the five grounds for refugee status mentioned in the 1951 Geneva Convention. It is as easy as that!

Now, in some regions of the world like Africa and South America, Refugee Status Determination might not stop at the 1951 definition. These two regions of the world have their own additional conventions on refugees, which are somewhat adapted to the reality of each of these places and to the actual reasons why people leave their countries. For example, the African Union Convention extends the definition of a refugee to a person fleeing “aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order” which includes, therefore, people fleeing general conflicts or civil wars. This means that an asylum caseworker in an African country would have to be aware of the additional definition of the OAU Convention and to apply this legal instrument before taking a final decision, by first trying to establish a convention nexus and, in the absence of such nexus, by determining whether the refugee claim is related to one of the grounds mentioned in the regional legal instrument of the African Union.

Prepare for the interview:

One common misconception that asylum caseworkers might have is that all refugees from a certain nationality for example have the same background, same journey and eventually the same reason why they are seeking asylum. However, this is one of the most dangerous misconception you might have as an Eligibility Officer in the asylum context as it prevents you from fully grasping the gist of the asylum seeker’s story. It also usually prevents you from preparing for the interview, which is a crucial step in conducting a fair interview and in taking the right decision on the case.

Therefore, it is highly important to ALWAYS prepare yourself for any interview and any new applicant. Preparation is the key to understanding the full context and to selecting the relevant legal instruments to use in any case. Let us take for instance the example of an adult male from a Middle Eastern country seeking asylum in any given country other than his own. When preparing for the interview, you would have to search at least basic information on the situation in his country of origin and his area of habitual residence in particular in order to properly assess his nationality (especially in the absence of identity documents) and to ask questions about his whereabouts during the conflict. When checking his registration file, which is the very first file containing basic information and biodata on any applicant, you realize that he has been politically affiliated with a party that you suspect is a perpetrator in the country. This will be extremely important to probe further with the applicant during the interview to understand whether or not he was affiliated in any way possible with war crimes or human rights violations, which would also mean using a different set of laws and conventions related to the Exclusion Acts of the 1951 Refugee Convention to determine whether or not he can still be recognized as a refugee.

On the other hand, if we take the example of an unaccompanied minor from Eritrea who is seeking asylum as he has fled forced military service and human rights violations in his country of origin, we would be definitely looking at different legal instruments to prepare for the interview and be able to take a decision on the claim. Such instruments include the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC), Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime…

Gather Country of Origin Information (COI)

Country of Origin Information are any data and updates you might research on a specific country, region or even village for your refugee status determination assessment. They include national laws in the country of origin of the asylum seeker. Why would you need national laws from the country of origin? Because part of the job of an asylum caseworker is to determine whether or not the applicant can obtain the protection of his state in his home country in the case of return. State protection is a key component of any given refugee claim. In fact, refugee status is a form of international protection given by a country rather than one’s own in the case of absence of protection from one’s own country of origin, especially when the state is the actual agent of persecution. Therefore, by researching national laws in the country of origin, a caseworker is able to see the full picture and determine whether the asylum seeker is in actual need of international protection. For example, when working with Eritrean nationals, the first thing a caseworker should do is familiarize him/herself with the laws on military service and illegal exit from the country. Knowing that people might face lifetime military service or imprisonment in the case of return to Eritrea is a crucial component of the refugee claim.

As a conclusion, it is always important to base your assessment on the relevant international and regional refugee law instruments. However, expanding your research by using human rights conventions and other human rights instruments to support your case is always a good practice.

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City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence (2016)

When we talk about refugee books, the first title that comes to mind is Ben Rawlence’s City of Thorns, not only for its captivating content but also for the success and reactions that it has received since it was originally published in 2016.

As the title summarizes it, the book is a collection of real stories of 9 refugees and their families in Dadaab Camp in Kenya, which was until 2017 the biggest refugee camp in the world until the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar changed this fact.

The major topic tackled in the book is resettlement as one of the 3 durable solutions for refugees around the world. It is the process of transferring recognized refugees from the country where they first sought asylum to a third country (mostly in Europe) which accepts to receive them according to bilateral agreements and to integrate them in the local society, eventually granting them permanent residency and prospects of a better future.

Thus, the non-fiction work depicts the atrociously long waiting periods for refugees at Dadaab Camp, loyal to the hope of one day realizing their dreams of reaching a foreign land as a new home.

Unlike a lot of other books, City of Thorns does not merely depict refugees’ journey, everyday struggle and experiences. It actually goes beyond that to prove a different point, that refugees’ lives are not always “a journey” like it is usually believed. They are actually most of the time a constant state of limbo, a period of life where time stops and waiting becomes the core activity of one’s day, month and even years. In fact, one of my favorite quotes that actually summarizes this idea is the following:

“Caught between the ongoing war in Somalia and a world unwilling to welcome them, the refugees can only survive in the camp by imagining a life elsewhere. It is unsettling: neither the past, nor the present, nor the future is a safe place for a mind to linger for long.”

Through the book, you are immersed in the lives of different categories of people including children and families, and you are exposed to the diversity of their lives and journeys, although they are in the same place and are exposed to the same things.

I have always heard about this book and wanted to read it. And I could not believe my eyes when I finally received it as a Christmas gift in 2017. For reasons of a busy work schedule and because the book is sort of a heavy read, I took a longish break after each of the stories, just to refresh my mind and go back to reading with a new breath.

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The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis by Patrick Kingsley (2015)

Although I personally do not like using the expression “refugee crisis”, The New Odyssey is a book that revolves around the issue of migration, asylum seeking and refugees mainly on European territories, depicting what has been notably called the “refugee crisis” or “the biggest arrivals of refugees since World War II”.

Written by The Guardian’s migration correspondent Patrick Kingsley, The New Odyssey is the result of a one-year travel journey in 17 different countries around the world to record in words the diverse journeys of asylum seekers and refugees reaching Europe.

Kingsley cleverly described journeys through different migration routes and means, including sea routes in the Mediterranean, the Sahara desert, mountains… He brings into life and in accurate details the journeys we once solely heard about in the news or by chance through a social media post, and goes beyond that to explain why this happens:

“Why do we keep going by sea?’ Abu Jana asks me. ‘Because we trust god’s mercy more than the mercy of people here.” 

During these journeys, Kingsley does not only focus on refugees themselves, but also on other “protagonists” in his interviewees’ stories along the way. Among these characters, you will encounter smuggles, those who facilitate (or not) human movements from continent to another, often not in the safest or most traditional ways. You will encounter volunteers and organizations staff and will be immersed in their lives as well, in the way they perform humanitarian work and their personal dilemmas. You will also be encountered with some “antagonists” at some point too, predominantly the border guards and police force, instructed to not be as welcoming to refugees as the volunteers or other characters.

Overall, it is a powerful and highly informative work of non-fiction which gives you insight on the history and background of today’s refugee issues, immerses you into real people’s long journeys to safety and reports real and genuine information collected from real individuals.

The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria by Samar Yazbek (2016)

Once during my studies for the M.A in Humanitarian Action, a classmate highlighted the lack of women’s voices in the “refugee literature” and how she was not able to find relevant books for a project she had on female refugees and humanitarian workers. And I remember jumping in to recommend The Crossing by Samar Yazbek, a Syrian writer and journalist and a refugee herself, one of the rare ones who, after fleeing Syria to seek asylum, crossed back into her home country through a small hole in the fence situated at the Syrian-Turkish borders. She did so with the aim of reporting to the world the atrocities of life in Syria at the present moment.

In this book, Yazbek gives insight on the diverse political issues in Syria starting from the regime, to the rise of democratic movements and the start of the conflict in the country. It is a non-fiction work where you can have an accurate understanding of the situation in Syria and why Syrians have been fleeing and seeking asylum all around the world.

The writer cleverly collects images of the conflict by reporting people’s experiences living in an unsafe place, children’s fears, life in bunkers and in shattered buildings, fear of snipers… It is by far the most captivating account of Syria today.

We are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai (2019)

Similarly on the topic of women refugees, I could not finish this article without mentioning Malala’s new book “We are Displaced: My Journey and Refugee Stories from Girls Around the World”. If, like me, you are working on Child Protection and/or SGBV, this book is a must-read for its profound meanings and powerful stories from little girls all over the globe.

Malala’s work is divided into two parts. In the first part, she focuses on her own journey as a forcibly displaced girl because of the rise of Taliban in Pakistan. She highlights the issue of internal displacement or what is referred to as “being a refugee in one’s own country” and then proceeds to retell her journey as a refugee outside Pakistan.

The second part is a collection of stories of 9 girls from different countries including Syria, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, showing the effects of forced displacement on girls and their development and celebrating their success stories in their new homes.

The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay (2016)

More on children, The Lightless Sky is an auto-memoir of a 12-year-old Afghan boy who was forced to flee Afghanistan, only accompanied by his 13-year-old brother to seek safety in another country. The book highlights the topic of children’s trauma in the context of forced migration, especially in armed conflict situations. Gulwali, in fact, sheds light in the book on his trauma as result of the horrific events he had lived because of the Taliban, the fact that both his father and grandfather were killed and the emotional and psychological state of his mother in the midst of all these incidents. Added to that, he is eventually separated from his brother, the closest person he still had at the time.

Before he finally finds refuge in the UK, the book takes us through the very difficult journey from Afghanistan to Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Calais…with a detailed description of the emotional experiences of an unaccompanied minor seeking asylum.

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Human Flow (2017)

Human Flow was the “movie of the refugee crisis” as critics often called it. Let me put it like this, you have a friend or a family member who often hears about refugees in the world, sees a diverse community or newly-resettled refugees in your community or neighborhood but who has never understood why people from other countries are welcomed in other places around the world, this is the movie to play on a movie night with him/her.

If one has time only for one movie to watch about refugees, Human Flow is your go-to choice.

It is the fruit of big efforts of the Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Wei Wei who, through this great work, aims at showing to different audiences the root causes behind displacement of people all over the world. He travelled through 23 countries in different continents to visually capture the reality of the “refugee crisis” in today’s world and bring it to the audience in a very captivating format and in simple words and visuals to explain the phenomenon of displacement to all people. The documentary focuses on different regions and countries, especially those which have been notably affected by the biggest numbers of refugee arrivals such as Greece, Turkey, France, Germany, Jordan, Kenya, Iraq…

Human Flow is not a fictional movie, which means there is no particular story or protagonist that the audience follows from start to end. It is more like a documentary which follows the migratory situation in different countries around the world.

One more thing to highlight about this movie is definitely the production quality. Having a full high quality drone scenery of the biggest refugee camps in the world gives you the impression that you are physically present in the field, especially if you watch it on a big screen, like I did when it was premiered in Brussels in February 2018. I could not wait for it to be available locally, and I was lucky to find cheap flights to Brussels during that week. So, I did not hesitate one moment to book my trip. I had no idea what else I would do for the rest of my time in Brussels, or which friends I would meet, but all I knew was that I wanted to watch Human Flow; everything else would come later.

It was a very emotional experience, especially that I was there on the Greek Island of Lesvos when Ai Wei Wei was filming the documentary. Watching those beautiful scenes in places I knew very well and seeing few familiar faces on the screen made me relive beautiful moments I spent in Lesvos with very brave refugees.

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First They Killed My Father (2017)

Inspired by a book with the same title, written by activist Loung Ung, the movie tackles the issue of forced displacement, child encampment and Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Realized and directed by Angelina Jolie, UNHCR Special Envoy, the movie is a biographical historical thriller of Cambodian activist Loung Ung who was forced to be a child soldier since the early age of 5 during the Communist Khmer Regime.

I must say that parts of the movie are hard to watch, especially if you have not read about child soldiers and mistreatment of children in wartime previously. With my professional focus on child protection, it was quite frustrating to follow scenes of torture and mistreatment inside labor camps in Cambodia, knowing that these incidents are still happening every day in countries like Eritrea, and that the people I work with today in the camps have either been through the exact same atrocities or have fled their countries to avoid them.

This 1975 thriller depicts the problem of forced internal displacement as families are forced out of their homes and villages by the Regime and pushed away into camps where they undergo forced labor, starvation, mistreatment, confiscation of belongings, deprivation of healthcare and foreign medicine and the list goes on. It also deals with the pertinent issue of children’s human rights in wartime and conflict zones, by illustrating the life of child soldiers, children IDPs and depicting children’s life-saving journey fleeing their homes for a better future.

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Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Again on the issue of child protection, child refugees and IDPs, Beasts of No Nation is an internationally renown movie that has recently been added on Netflix and that everyone working on the issue of refugees should watch. There are usually a lot of movies on wartime, and a lot of movies on children. However, it is rather rare to find movies tackling the issue of children actively yet forcibly participating in war. In this context, Beasts of No Nation follows the story of Agu, a Nigerian child living in the “buffer zones” which are areas protected by the United Nations from the internal conflict in the country. But this temporary security soon comes to an end when his area gets invaded by the local government, killing families, bombing huts and kidnapping children to be forcibly taken to military training camps. He ends up being part of a whole child army run by The Commandant, played by Idris Alba. It illustrates the gradual yet fast transition from an innocent playful child to a perpetrator of the war, highlighting the trauma of forced displacement, forced labor and war on the psychology of children.

It is crucial to watch Beasts of No Nation for those who work with African refugees and asylum seekers, especially with children, and who might encounter similar stories to Agu’s. The movie would serve not only as an eye-opener to what is happening in civil wars in Africa but also as a very accurate Country of Origin Information resource for people involved in Refugee Status Determination procedures.

Register now: Child Protection in Humanitarian Settings (Columbia University)

Born in Syria (2016)

Following the stories of 7 Syrian refugee children in Europe, Born in Syria is one of the rare movies that focus on the whole journey of refugees from home country to local integration in the host country. It follows children by depicting their life in Syria before, during and after the conflict, thus highlighting the traumatizing experiences they have been through in detail. It follows their journey in reception centers and refugee camps in Turkey, Hungary and Greece and what that resulted in later on in their life. And finally, it follows up on their integration in their final destination in Europe during their first 6 months in the country. Through this last stage, you can see the different ways of acculturation that newly-arrived refugees usually adopt, which often differ even within the same family. You follow their asylum procedures from the first reception center until the happy and very emotional moments of receiving the refugee status, and you continue to see the transitions in people’s lives, especially children’s lives through the efforts made to integrate into a new country, including language learning, communicating with the local community and starting a new school for the first time in years.

Refugee (2016)

Refugee is a filmmaker project realized by 5 renowned photographers including Clementine Malpas and Leslie Knott. The photographers travelled the world to illustrate the atrocities of war, political persecution and other root causes of refugee displacement. The very first scene of the movie actually starts with the refugee definition in the 1951 Geneva Convention, which I thought was very clever as it caters for all kinds of audiences. It also sheds light on the issue of family reunification of refugees in Europe and the effects family separation has on displaced communities in different places. It is not the easiest watch, or the kind of movie you would play after a bad day at work, as it depicts the issue of migration from a very realistic perspective; but it is a must watch if you want to know more about refugees.

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Protection is commonly defined as “all activities aimed at obtaining full respect for the rights of the individual in accordance with the letter and spirit of the relevant bodies of law, namely human rights law, international humanitarian law and refugee law” (Source). Hence, it is correct to assume that protection covers all activities and projects implemented by the different agents working with refugees, and this does not only include legal protection such as provision of refugee documents, but also every day tasks such as casework and recreational activities. But let’s see first how protection of refugees came about as a concept.

In fact, protection is primarily the responsibility of states and its agents. In the case of a state or government that is unwilling or unable to protect its own citizens for any given reason, these individuals have the right to seek asylum elsewhere, which is stipulated in the 1951 Geneva Convention’s definition of a refugee. The 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol are at the cornerstone of the international legal framework for refugee protection as they establish the main principles on which refugee protection is based – such as the Principle of non-refoulement and the principle of Non-discrimination.

What is Legal Protection of Refugees?

Legal protection of refugees does not start when the individuals receive the legal refugee status. It starts from the moment the person arrives at the borders of the potential country of asylum. This is when we talk about the principle of non-refoulement, which stipulates that no potential asylum seeker is to be returned to their country of origin or to a third country where their lives might be in danger, and that everyone has the right to seek asylum.

The fundamental principle of non-refoulement plays a very important role in the international refugee protection system. It prohibits the return of a person (including by non-admission to the border) to a State where his life and safety might be in danger. To some degree, non-refoulement involves the admission of the person who is still an asylum seeker on the territory of the State to which he is seeking refuge. No protection can really be conceived without this territorial or geographical dimension, which gives legal protection its meaning. Non-refoulement is in a way the very foundation of the protection system. It is included in Article 33 of the Convention of 28 July 1951. If the restrictive interpretation is possible, and has even been used often, it is clear that the principle of non-refoulement must be applicable to the asylum seeker even before he receives a positive decision of eligibility. This is how it is understood by the Office of the High Commissioner.

Article 33 – Prohibition of expulsion or return (“refoulement”)

1. No Contracting State shall expel or return (” refouler “) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Now that the individual is safe and admitted into the territory of their potential country of asylum, legal protection starts from the moment of receiving these individuals and registering them with the relevant authorities, be it the government or UNHCR in some cases. Access to registration as an asylum seeker is one of the first instruments of legal protection as it guarantees that the individual is under the responsibility of the registering authority, which means not only that they would not be returned to their country while their file is being processed but also that they are now legally staying on the territory.

Legal protection continues through the phase of Refugee Status Determination, where the relevant authority uses international refugee law instruments to decide whether or not the asylum seeker should be granted the refugee status, depending on the reasons why they left their country.

By going through status determination processes and potentially being recognized as a refugee, individuals are legally protected by being granted legal documents that are issued from their country of asylum and are valid for a certain period of time, usually not less that one year at a time. This procedure guarantees therefore the freedom of movement of refugees in the country of asylum, apart from the fact that it gives them access to any sort of social contracts, legal procedures and aspects of everyday life that the local community usually enjoys.

Physical Protection

The next type of protection is physical protection which, as the name indicates, focuses on the physical needs of refugees and asylum seekers. Physical protection covers all sorts of accommodation and sheltering to start with. Depending on the context, the situation and the country of asylum, accommodation of refugees can be done in camps, shelters, urban areas, host families…etc. The main idea is that persons of concern are safe and are accommodated in a secured place. This also encloses other sorts of physical needs like food and sanitation. In order to fulfill physical protection minimum standards, refugees need to be provided with adequate food, sanitation, hygienic products and any non-food items that are needed in a specific context or emergency.

Ongoing Protection: Case Management

Protection does not stop at the door of the refugee camp or at the legal document stamped by UNHCR. It is actually an ongoing process as we are working with extremely vulnerable people every single day. Indeed, casework is one of the most known ways of protection of refugees as case workers follow on a day-to-day basis issues of refugees and work on finding efficient solutions. This can be related to all sorts of protection issues like Gender-Based Violence, Child Protection, Health issues, education.

Durable Solutions

The refugee situation is supposedly temporary, based on the international legal framework. This means that the event that contributed to the displacement of refugees might disappear on the short or long run; and refugees would then be able to return to their country of origin. However, if this is not the case, it is likely that the refugee will have to consider his final settlement in another country and to take a new nationality, thereby ceasing to be uprooted.

One of the essential functions of UNHCR is “to seek permanent solutions to the problem of refugees, by assisting Governments and, subject to the approval of the Governments concerned, private organizations to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of such refugees, or their assimilation into new national communities” (Source).

Durable solutions aim at “empowering refugees, especially women, and strengthening their productive capacities and self-reliance” (Source).

The first of these solutions is “voluntary repatriation” in the country of origin. This implies the cessation of refugee status. It is therefore the reintegration of the individual to his home nation-state. This solution is put forward by UNHCR as the best for the refugee in the case of cessation of the reasons that led to his/her displacement in the first place.

When voluntary return is not possible, and in the case where the host country offers the possibility of “local integration”, it is therefore assimilation to the host country that is proposed, either by remaining a refugee (thus deprived of citizenship rights) or by taking the nationality of the host country. This is the second option that is being considered by UNHCR. Refugees are then caught in a legal process of granting them rights that are more and more similar to those of the nationals of the host country. Over time, this process should lead to permanent resident status and, in some cases, the nationality of the country of asylum. We should not forget, however, that access to nationality is a discretionary right of states.

The third solution is resettlement in a third country or the continuation of migration and access to citizenship in this third country. It is considered both as a last resort solution, when the other two have failed, and as a means to achieve a more equitable burden-sharing of refugees. UNHCR recommends to host countries cases that it considers to be in need of special protection.

As a conclusion, it is crucial to remember that refugee protection is a very vast field of work in which humanitarian workers can use their skills and achieve their potential by simply abiding by the 1951 Refugee Convention and all the other legal instruments used in working with refugees.

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1 I am not as strong as I thought I am, and nothing is wrong with that

I have had so many people in the past ask how I could do this kind of job, how I could have the strength to deal on a daily basis with one of the most vulnerable groups of people in the world. And to be honest, the answer is always a shoulder shrug, a smile or a confident “I got used to it”. But in reality, I haven’t. The inhumanness of today’s world, the atrocities of war and the horror episodes of mistreatment and abuse that I keep hearing from children makes me unfortunately immune to getting used to all this. I have never gotten used to it; I have just learned to always expect worse than the worst.

The most important lesson I have learned working with children is that my strength is constantly being tested, my strength as a humanitarian worker, as a child protection specialist and as a human being first of all. At work, I have learned that I am not a superhero as I had thought I could be if I work in this field. None of us is. And none of us can protect every single one of the over 13 million refugee children on earth. I have learned and accepted this, not as a way to stop making an effort or to tap on my own shoulder and give myself an excuse if things go wrong. I accepted it to put the correct expectations by myself and for myself, to know where my limits are and what my strengths can help me reach, to simple motivate myself in a healthier way.

At Skaramagas camp in Athens, I had a weekly Friday ritual. It starts with a build-up of emotions from the first hours at work, add to that a group therapy session by our work psychologist which usually turns into the most intense space for tears and the deepest, most honest feelings; and the day usually ends with me sobbing in a corner of the container which was our common office in the camp at the time. Why Friday? Because it was the end of the week and by then I had seen, heard and felt enough every day with the children around me, so much so I was not able to tame my flooding emotions anymore.

However, the more I worked with children the more I leaned how to react to things and how to be “resilient”, which brings me to my next point.

2 Children are the strongest, most resilient group of refugees

I really believe that if I haven’t worked with refugee children, I would have missed on a lot of experiences, a lot of “pearls of wisdom” and a lot of anecdotes that still make my day when I remember them years later. Not only did I get the chance to work with the naturally funniest, most spontaneous social group, but I also got the amazing opportunity to learn much more about the field from the children themselves. On many occasions in my career, I saw parents cry in front of their children, I saw community leaders crash and feel desperate in camps in different countries. But I do not remember a day where I saw children express despair, fear or trauma in a negative or unhealthy way. Working previously in partnership with UNICEF, I have exhausted the list of trainings, manuals and guidelines on child protection and child psychology, preparing myself for a very difficult context of work. I had always known that children are usually the most traumatized group of refugees and then had seen it first hand with Syrian children fleeing war, Yazidi children escaping massacres, Eritreans fleeing lifetime military service, Somalis fleeing the atrocities of Al-Shabab and trying to erase the images of their parents killed in front of their eyes, and the list goes on… However, the longer I work with children, the more I realize they have the highest level of resilience and they are able to use that trauma and mold it into a motivator to build a psychological shield that helps them acculturate and healthily adapt to their new situation.

3 Children are children, refugees or not

Reiterating my usual reminder that refugees are human beings in the first place, I would similarly like to stress that refugee children are children before any “label” that might accompany them at a certain unfortunate period of their life. In other words, I have learned to look beyond the political labels, legal status or migration route of a child and simply focus on the fact that he/she is a child to start with. Realizing that, I noticed that my language was different when I communicate with children. I would not use the same jargon or technical words I would usually use with an adult. I would rather refer to simple examples and the pop culture to explain the most complicated legal procedures to a child. It definitely helped that I was around only 10 years older and had mostly grown up watching the same cartoons as the Syrian children I met in Greece for instance. But it is as easy for anyone and with any cultural background as long as we remember that we are working with children, with human beings.

Likewise, Refugee Status Determination interviews became much more fun with the “children are children” principle I have been basing my work on. Interviews with 12-16 year-old  unaccompanied minors have become our rare opportunity to “have breakfast together and chit-chat for a while about everything and nothing” as I like to explain to the applicants.

Again, children are children. And if you are really passionate about working with children, then it will not be as different if you work with refugee children and unaccompanied minors. The most important thing is to be genuinely kind and interested, and you’ll see the magic happen.

Children know it when you’re really in it to help them, and when you’re with them for the wrong reasons. They know when you are making an effort and they will show their gratitude for it on so many levels, but they are also extremely start and can understand when you are not as genuine. To a child, any child, small things matter.

One of the incidents I would never forget in my life was when I met one of the children I worked with previously on Lesvos Island in Greece. I met him by chance in Athens and I was a little surprised he could remember my name and other details about me. His explanation was “you were the first one who got us chocolate after 8 months of living on aid food and no cash assistance; how could I not remember you?”.

4 Children inspire the artist in me

Working in the humanitarian field and being exposed to some of the world’s most horrific atrocities, we usually find ourselves delving deeper and deeper in refugees’ stories and forgetting what we as human beings can create. Adopting the idea that children refugees are children in the first place, this gave me the inspiration to do more than just be a protection associate. Children have the strongest ability to inspire the artist in us and together we can create magical results. With that in mind, I started a music therapy project in Greece with 12-17-year-old children from different nationalities, speaking different languages and having gone through different journeys. It did not matter as long as we all spoke music as a common language. The project was part of a psychosocial support approach and gave wonderful results. If I could ever go back in time, I would wish to go back to the last concert we held at Skaramagas Refugee Camp where participants of the project proudly sang songs from their hometowns, prayed for their countries to “come back” and expressed emotions they had not been able to express in words.

5 The truth does come out from children’s mouth

Finally, I have understood that children are the most honest human beings you could ever meet. They are curious, ask a ton of questions but in return they give you the most powerful advice you could ever get. I have learned to listen carefully to child refugees and learn from their experiences. I might have not been through what they have lived on the journey to safety, but the first thing I could do as a protection associate before anything is to be there for them, hear their stories and assess their needs to know on what to focus in my work to be able to help them.

The post 5 Lessons I’ve learnt working with children as UNHCR Protection Associate appeared first on Human Rights Careers.

Celebrated on June 20th of each year, World Refugee Day is an opportunity to pay tribute to those who have had to flee, show respect to their hope and courage to have rebuilt their lives in a new place. This commemorative day is now being celebrated in many countries to pay tribute to refugees, asylum seekers, displaced and stateless persons. The day is an open space for a variety of initiatives and events involving associations, locals and refugees. It aims to give everyone the means to understand the situation of refugees and the urgent need to protect and welcome them.

1 Take part in a World Refugee Day activity

Usually, on World Refugee Day, many of the organizations working in the field organize activities to commemorate the day. It is the biggest occasion for refugee related organizations and UN agencies and thus they often start preparing for the day months in advance.

Depending on the country, the organization’s focus and sometimes the size of the refugee community in a specific place, activities can range from a simple celebration to a multiple-day event full of activities, games and panel discussions.

This year, on June 20^th 2020, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency has organized a global campaign for World Refugee Day called Every Action Counts. This year, UNHCR aims to remind the world that everyone, including refugees, can contribute to society and Every Action Counts in the effort to create a more just, inclusive, and equal world. This was not the first time that UNHCR or other organizations celebrate World Refugee Day with a similar activity. You should simply keep an eye on local events around June of each year and be willing to take part in one of them to show solidarity and commemorate the day.

If, for some reason, you are not able (or not into) an activity as “active” as a marathon, do not worry. On World Refugee Day, there is definitely something for every taste and you can always find your way to an enjoyable activity on June 20^th. In fact, the most common activity on World Refugee Day is a cultural event which pays tribute to refugees and their origins and aims to create an atmosphere of home for everybody. On June 20^th, 2017 for example, the Greek Forum of Refugees in partnership with other local stakeholders organized a multicultural event in Athens where refugees and asylum seekers from African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries came together to showcase their cultures and share a taste of their origins with the local community. Imagine being able to meet people from all parts of the world, see traditional outfits from a variety of countries and taste food that you probably would not be able to find elsewhere if you ask, all in one place and in one day. The whole world has become a little global village and we ought to feel lucky to be exposed to the richness of our world through these small celebrations every now and then. These types of events are usually held in a public space, notably very central and known to locals so as to encourage everybody to join the activity.

For food lovers who do not want to just have a small bite of an ethnic dish, do not worry, there are also events which entirely dedicated for gastronomy. Refugee Food Festival is a very accurate example! The project started in France in 2016 when a few locals wanted to further encourage refugees’ local integration in their community. From a small idea, the festival has now just had a 4th successful version this year in 15 cities from 9 different countries in 3 continents. Alternatively, you can take the initiative yourself and celebrate World Refugee Day with a meal at a refugee-owned restaurant in your city. You will not only be supporting a refugee-owned business and the result of a very hard journey to safety, but you would also try some of the most incredible ethnic dishes ever because, as one of the Refugee Food Festivals said, “Cooking makes it possible to go beyond status, to discover other people’s worlds, by sharing what is both most singular and most universal.”

2 Raise awareness

As simple as it sounds, raising awareness of the current topic of refugees and migration is in itself a huge step in showing solidarity with refugees and adopting the cause in a way. Start by yourself and, if you feel like you want to know more on refugees’ backgrounds, why they leave and what legal instruments are used to determine refugee status, take the time you need to read more and obtain all the information you need. Nowadays, the whole world is talking about the refugee issue or topic. Although some resources like the media might have a specific approach or try to portray refugees in a certain way, there are also other resources where you can find relevant information on the topic and correct data on what is happening around the world. The resources are endless.

But what is more important on a day like world refugee day is to also raise awareness among your community. It is undeniable that local communities are usually divided into 2 groups: those who clearly show solidarity and welcome refugees and those who might have a defensive approach to migration in general, especially in countries or regions where the numbers of refugees are bigger than others. The reason behind this defensive attitude might not always be a result of one’s personality or ideologies; it can also be caused by the dissemination of wrong information, the influence of the media in today’s world and other factors related to the fear of the other and the fear of change in demographics in one’s community. This is when raising awareness would be very helpful and a first step in helping refugees indirectly, especially around World Refugee Day where some tensions usually take place in different areas of the world and by both parties. Remember, you do not need to give a political speech; sometimes it is enough to just bring it up and see what happened. Start with your family, sit with your close ones and tell them about your new neighbor from Somalia or the community center that just opened last week to shelter refugees. Have these sorts of conversations and hear what your surrounding has to say, then do your magic!

3 Volunteer

Volunteering has always been one of the first ways to help refugees and other vulnerable groups. Since the start of the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015, high numbers of volunteers have flown to Greece, Calais in France, Turkey and other locations where the numbers of arrivals were soaring. My career working with refugees has started as a volunteer in Greek camps around 5 years ago. If you do believe in the cause and want to make a change, especially on World Refugee Day, be a volunteer with a local organization, offer your help organizing an activity or event, offer your creative ideas for this occasion… the possibilities are endless. Depending on what is available in your community, you can be part of this celebration as a volunteer in different ways and help organizations and people who probably need your assistance now more than any other time. Just offer!

4 Donate or fundraise

If you do not have time to attend a physical event or volunteer, another way to show your commitment to the cause on World Refugee Day is to provide financial assistance, as little or much as that can be. As we know, non-profit and grassroot organizations depend entirely on funding from external agents, thus the name “non-profit”. For some small organizations, planning an event on World Refugee Day can be a big burden if the finances do not match the staff ambition and commitment to refugees. To show your solidarity and be part of World Refugee Day, you can always choose to donate to an organization of your choice and help make World Refugee Day happen. Almost all NGOs nowadays have a direct link on their websites for donations; otherwise they would provide a bank account and explain how you can transfer the money. If you are feeling a little more generous than that, you can also opt for a recurring donation which is yet another monthly subscription to add to your collection, except this one is really meaningful.

Alternatively, you can organize your own fundraising campaign and dedicate the gains to a chosen organization or community center. Fundraising activities are limitless and include selling your crafts, singing, organizing a game or even starting an online campaign for a cause.

5 Reach out to a refugee

Leaving the best for the last, what you can really do to make a difference, not only on World Refugee Day but every minute of every day is to reach out to a refugee. Make them feel welcome in your community, show them around, help them practice your local language, teach them about your traditions, simply be a human to a fellow human.

The post World Refugee Day: 5 Things You Can Do to Make A Difference appeared first on Human Rights Careers.

1 Do it for the right reasons

Over the years I have heard people talk about why they have chosen to work in the humanitarian field, and with refugees in particular. And although I have heard really personalized and intimate accounts of why someone would choose this career, I have also been a witness of some not as “expected” answers. Choosing a career with displaced people is not only a personal choice you make for yourself, it can also affect the lives of human beings in the most vulnerable states of their whole life. You have to be honest with yourself and really understand why you would like to start or continue a career in the humanitarian field. Do you want to help people in a difficult situation? Do you strongly believe in the cause of refugees and want to be part of it? Do you want to feel like you are doing something valuable with your life? Great, go for it.

If you are doing this for the exotic trips to remote areas of the world, for a diplomatic passport or simply for a paycheck at the end of the month, you can still be one of the top performers in your organization but the question is whether or not you will be able to give it the same enthusiasm as your first day if things ever go wrong.

2 Learn as much as you can

Knowledge is key in every career. It is not only about the humanitarian field. But the reason why you have a lot more opportunities to learn in this case is that you are meeting people from different backgrounds, countries, cultures and who speak different and rich languages. My advice is to learn as much as you can on the job, from your colleagues, those who have been in the field for probably decades but also those who have just started their career and have fresh and new ideas that you might not have thought about before. Listen to ideas and be critical but open to learn from everyone.

But most importantly, learn from the people you are working with and for: the refugees themselves. I have stopped counting the times I realized that adopting a community based approach in my work has taught me much more than all the theoretical frameworks I was taught in books.

3 Be kind

We are working with human beings and it is, for me at least, a big blessing because we can use the golden rule we have always heard which goes “treat others how you want to be treated”!

4 Do not give promises

In the humanitarian field, we usually have the tendency of trying to do everything, help everyone and change everything that is not working. But again, we have to know how to properly manage our expectations, and most importantly the expectations of refugee communities. Sometimes you might be pressured to give answers, to schedule an interview or a home visit. You might even find yourself surrounded by a big group of beneficiaries, all having urgent and important requests. However, the most useful tip I could give here is not to give promises to get out of such situations. It will just get you into more trouble later on and, more importantly, you will eventually lose people’s trust in you.

5 Set clear boundaries

As I mentioned earlier, it is really important to have a good relationship with the communities you are working with, especially if you are meeting them on a regular (i.e daily) basis. However, one of the most important things to remember is to set your boundaries from the beginning. You might be wondering how it is possible that in a humanitarian job you should be expected to set boundaries between you and the human beings who need you the most. But, again, it all comes back to expectations management and self-care. Setting boundaries, professional ones, between you and your beneficiaries prevent you from “over-promising” or from being expected to do more even if you did not promise anything. It also helps set a clear line between your professional and personal life so that you do not end up with a burnout. Some of these boundaries would be already set by your organization in your contract or code of conduct. But the rest is all up to you so you have to be particularly careful with this.

6 Keep an eye on vulnerabilities

Depending on the kind of job you have in your organization, detecting vulnerable cases can be the core of your job. However, even if it is not, any humanitarian worker should have an eye for vulnerabilities among the community. Always keep in mind specific triggers and signs of the different vulnerabilities a refugee can have, and know in advance the referral system in your office, camp or with your partners in order to act immediately and refer the person.

7 Choose your words

One of the biggest problems in the humanitarian field is communication skills. We all come from different backgrounds, are raised in different ways and go through different education systems where we devour books and make sure we know every single term in the humanitarian or legal field. And most often than not, we tend to speak to our beneficiaries the same way we speak to everyone else, regardless to differences in cultures, backgrounds and translation issues. Hence, remember to use simple terms as the goal is that refugees understand what is going on, regardless of what we have learned by heart from books.

8 Be prepared for emergency situations

It goes without saying that working in the humanitarian field is one of the most rewarding careers but that it also comes with some drawbacks as well. One of them is the fact that you need to be always prepared for an emergency situation. You might be thinking “but if I am not working in a conflict zone, why would I be worried about emergencies?” Emergencies can vary from an abrupt change in your office’s focus or strategy which means you have to abandon your current work for a while and do something totally different, to a situation of emergency in the whole country where either the numbers of arrivals suddenly double so you have to be ready to welcome and follow up on a much bigger number of people than usual, or where the security situation of the whole country suddenly knows a change, like in the case of terrorist attacks or revolutions.

9 Self-Care

Do you remember what they say on an airplane when giving safety instructions? Before putting the oxygen mask on the person next to you, put on your mask first and then help anyone else in need. That is exactly how you should look at a career with refugees. As long as you are constantly stressed, exhausted or experiencing burnout, there is only much you can do to help the vulnerable.

Honestly speaking, when I first started working with refugees, I could not help but work all day, all night, thinking the more I work, the more I could help. In my third year in Greece, I had a full time job, a remote-based freelance job, I was volunteering at 4 different organizations, 2 of which were based in camps around 2 hours away from Athens and I was on top of that working on (or procrastinating) my first MSc. thesis. I used to wake up at 6 am to leave the house a little before 7 to reach the camp at 9. I would finish by 5 and run to university 3 days a week, which was just about 2 hours, 2 buses and one subway away, or run to other camps and offices the rest of the week to honor the million commitments I have made to different organizations. And I would still come back home around midnight to write my thesis for a couple more hours. Long story short, for over a year, I was constantly exhausted, I did not know what a good night sleep was and I realized later on that I had bitten much more than I could chew at that particular time of my life. In my head, holidays rhymed with luxury and so I didn’t take any either.. until I could not do it anymore. I felt overwhelmed and unable to perform any task. That’s when I found that self-care is not just a new trend or a luxury as I thought. It was really more like a refueling station for you to carry on doing the great work you are doing for humanity! So take care of yourself.

10 When in doubt, ask

It is that easy, when in doubt or when you are not sure you are doing the right thing, ASK, ask the refugee community you are dealing with every day, let them know they are involved and treat them the way you want to be treated as I said before, as simple as that.

The post 10 Tips for Working with Refugees appeared first on Human Rights Careers.

Know your population

Every experience in working with refugees is a new journey and a new destination; thus, preparation is key. The first time I worked with refugees, it was mostly with the Syrian community in Greece. Being originally from the Arab world myself, I did not really think I needed much “preparation” to do before immersing myself in the immense world of refugee work. I thought that speaking the same language and having more or less the same holidays and traditions was enough to be able to know the population I was working with. Little did I know! No sooner did I start than I realized it was a whole new world of different ethnicities, complicated dialects and new customs and traditions that, even as an Arab, I have never heard of before. And although the experience of learning on the job was satisfying, I could tell that the things I did not know sometimes affected the way I performed at work through the way I approached the community, the way I sometimes made pre-assumptions on their needs just because I thought I came from a similar background and even the way I pronounced a few words in Arabic with my not so genuine Middle Eastern accent.

Taking another example, one of the most interesting experiences I had was with the Yazidi community from Iraq. Yazidis belong to a very particular ethno-religious minority predominantly in Iraq and if at some point I found it difficult to deal with all social groups of Syrian refugees, with Yazidis I was just utterly clueless for a very long time! When I was deployed at Skaramagas Refugee Camp in Athens, the biggest camp in Attika region at the time in terms of population, I had no idea I was going to be encountering such a big number of ethnicities and nationalities. And if I could change one thing about the way I prepared for my new experience back then, it would be to further research the backgrounds of the diverse populations I was going to work with. It is totally true that these are also things you learn along the way and that, despite all, this is my favorite way of learning. However, making your research on the people you will be working with is essential both for you and for the beneficiaries as culture shock is not only a concept related to travel, but it can also take place in any social context. And if you want to gain your beneficiaries’ trust as soon as possible to provide a good community based approach on working with refugees, you would not want culture shock to stand in the way.

Take a free course on Refugee Rights and Migration!

Research Country of Origin Information

There is a reason why refugees are refugees! Warsan Shire was more than right when she wrote her now very famous line “no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”. And if you are planning on working in the refugee context or already have a career in this field, you already understand this. However, with the growing number of refugees and asylum seekers in the world and the diversity of people’s backgrounds, countries and conflicts, it is sometimes difficult to keep updated on all the details of each and every context.

Depending on what exactly your position would be at your organization, the level of details you research on countries of origins might differ. However, every single person working with refugees, from the one spending his/her day in a refugee camp between tents to the one doing paperwork in an office, needs to have a basic knowledge on the conflicts that are arising in the world and making people leave their countries to seek asylum elsewhere.

If you are working in Refugee Status Determination, for example, this is the very core of your job! You are not in the position to decide whether or not an asylum seeker can be granted refugee status in your country if you do not have all the detailed information on the situation in his/her country of origin and on the national laws of that country. For other Protection positions, it is enough to understand the general context as it will help in identifying vulnerabilities among beneficiaries, in understanding trauma and triggers and eventually in putting in place effective systems and mechanisms for individual casework and follow up on different protection issues.

Information are quite easy to find, especially on EASO’s website (the European Asylum Service Office) which is regularly updated.

Start with zero stereotypes

Unconscious bias is a scientifically proven undetachable element of the human brain. Whether we admit it or not, we all have our own biases on everything and everyone around us which are mainly a result of our upbringing and the societal norms we are used to. And although we might be extremely careful in our daily life, especially if we are working in a multicultural environment such as that of refugees, sometimes unconscious bias manifests itself in the least expected ways. It can be the way we react to someone’s greeting, the way we keep pronouncing someone’s name incorrectly, the way we overly highlight our differences with someone… These are all genuinely innocent every day manifestations of unconscious bias that we might encounter during a conversation with someone from the exact same background or even with someone from our own family, let alone if you are working with people who might have come literally from the other side of the globe and whom you have always seen as different, with all meanings the word different might entail. Therefore, it is crucial, when starting a new experience working with refugees and asylum seeker, that you start afresh with zero stereotypes or biases. Neutrality is key here and learning along the way is the most rewarding experience as I mentioned earlier.

Manage your own expectations

When humanitarian workers are asked why they chose this type of career, their immediate answer often includes something about “changing the world” or “putting an end to refugees’ suffering” and other related ambitious statements. I keep remembering how my answer changed over the years from “I want to change the world” to “I want to help as I can” to “I want to make a change” in general. I do not know how big this change would be or what exactly I am changing but I have learned the hard way that there isn’t such thing as a humanitarian superhero. There are however people who are motivated and dedicated, who wake up every day to get their work done effectively and make all the effort they can without expecting anything in return. It is extremely frustrating to start a humanitarian career with the fixed idea that you and you alone would change the whole world and stop people from fleeing their home countries, to soon realize that it takes much much longer and a much bigger effort from a much higher authority to make the world a better place. That is why I would advise anyone to focus on their tasks have little expectations on the superhero part of the humanitarian world. If you complete your tasks on due time, you have made a change on your day. If you provide service to a refugee with no delays, you have made a change in his/her day. If you conduct your RSD interview and assess someone’s claim properly, you have definitely made a change in someone’s life. However, do keep your expectations low on anything that exceeds your power to avoid frustration; which also brings me to my final point.

Teach yourself to care for yourself

It goes without saying that working with refugees is not on the list of the top 10 easiest jobs in the world. And as rewarding as it is, a career in this field can be extremely draining and can affect one’s mental health intensely. Being exposed to people’s traumas, work pressure and other stress elements can lead to vicarious trauma, burnout and other psychological and mental health issues. This is when self-care becomes crucial for a healthier work and personal life. As a preparation for working with refugees, teach yourself how to better take care of yourself. Journal, go for a walk every morning, practice something you like… Find your own thing to keep your mental health intact and remember that you cannot be helping other people in need if you are not able to help yourself first!

The post 5 ways to prepare yourself for working with refugees appeared first on Human Rights Careers.

Not so long ago, I was a student, a volunteer, someone who is very passionate about the cause of refugees but who did not know exactly where to start or how to get my dream job. Throughout this journey, I had to correct misconceptions and adopt new attitudes. I had to work on myself and prioritize my interests. And I would like to share with you these not so secret ways to become a protection associate at UNHCR.

Gain a degree in a relevant field

I am the last person to believe that studying a certain specialty automatically grants you the skills and requirements to land a job in the same field. It is not about WHAT you study per se, but rather about HOW you study it. The majority of staff at the protection unit of UNHCR have a legal background as it is the legal unit of the organization. However, I would like to stress that having not studied law in particular does not necessarily exclude you from enjoying this opportunity. I am taking the time to highlight this idea because I would really like professionals in the field to correct this misconception because it does frustrate potential applicants who might actually meet the requirements for the job nonetheless.

Let us rephrase, a degree in law is a great bonus! UNHCR’s protection unit is the space where international and humanitarian legal instruments are applied in order to assist displaced people and serve a common cause. So, clearly, having had studied these instruments for years and applied them as a student, an intern or a lawyer makes it much easier for you to do your work properly. However, you can also have the requirements and knowledge to do this kind of work if you have a background in international relations, political science, humanitarian action, human geography…etc. While international relations as a major does not exactly introduce you to legal instruments that you could use for SGBV or child protection casework, it does give you the background to understand the reasons behind displacement of human beings, migration trends and the work of international organizations and UN agencies, which is just enough background for you to be a great protection associate.

What I want to highlight is that whatever you are studying does not necessarily define your career just yet. It is just a first direction towards what you are meant to be doing and what you will excel at in the future. Protection is about, well, providing protection to vulnerable people. So whether or not you are a lawyer does not define how good of a protection staff member you will be.

Be culturally competent

Working at UNHCR means working with people from extremely varied and different cultural backgrounds than your own, every single day! You need to remember this and, if you have never thought about it, you need to take it extremely seriously. For a lot of people, this is probably the hardest part of any work in the field of migration or displacement. It isn’t automatically easy for some people to be in a multicultural environment, let alone deal with people from countries you have never known existed, hear languages with sounds you have never thought a human being could produce and witness traditions you only thought were mentioned in fiction novels. I honestly only heard of Eritrea few years ago when I had to meet a group of Eritrean asylum seekers for the first time of my life. I had no idea what language they spoke and I could not understand for a while what exactly triggered the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia It isn’t easy. But this would be your environment every single day. It isn’t enough to respect different cultures, though. You will have to be culturally competent. It is a skill, and like any other skill, it gets better with time. It is not important how culturally competent you already are; what is more important is how flexible and open you are to learning about these cultures and making an effort to break the cultural barriers.

And in a context where people are displaced from their own home, away from everything familiar and arriving at a destination they also probably never knew existed, it is extremely important to take into consideration people’s acculturation processes and realize that, apart from the atrocities of war and the difficult journey, culture shock can be as traumatizing, if not more.

Choose your focus

Protection is the core of UNHCR and it is a very broad field of work. It revolves around providing a safe space for displaced and vulnerable people and making sure their special needs are addressed. However, with the background of displacement, wars and other atrocities in the world and with the intense difficulty of the journey to the country of asylum, it is important to choose a focus that you are passionate about and focus on it if possible. The most known areas of work in the protection unit of UNHCR are child protection, SGBV and RSD (Refugee Status Determination). In some UNHCR operations, you would find different people focusing on each of these areas. In other operations, one person might be the focal point for two or more of these topics. I have mainly been focusing on child protection and SGBV. Recently, I started working on RSD as well and I am glad I did because it is as interesting as my other two areas of work. Once you choose what you would like to do in particular, explore the topic and work on enhancing your skills, which brings me to my next point.

Be eager to learn

The internet is full of online courses and trainings on topics in the humanitarian field. Once you have chosen your potential topic, you could start looking for relevant trainings online to have at least a basic knowledge on its components and how it is addressed from a humanitarian or protection. My best online friends are Coursera and Edx. They have always provided courses related to gender and SGBV and others about children in displacement and how to protect them. They also provide more general courses on international humanitarian law for those who would choose RSD as a focus.

I also recommend researching local and international conferences and events which tackle the issue you choose to work on. Be an eager learner; there is literally no limit to knowledge. So use any free time you have to read and find more information on the area you want to specialize in as a Protection Associate. Protection is limitless.

Volunteer

Volunteering is, according to me, the best way you could gain experience before getting that dream job of yours. As I said, protection is about providing a safe space for vulnerable displaced people where all their rights are reserved, which is also done outside of UNHCR. As a young student, volunteering can give you space to perform similar tasks with the opportunity to learn from mentors and people who have more experience in the field. This brings me back to my first point about not having to be a lawyer to become a protection associate. Experience and knowledge comes from all sorts of activities you perform while building your portfolio for this position, so know what you want exactly and work accordingly.

The post How to Become a Protection Associate at UNHCR appeared first on Human Rights Careers.

Working in refugee contexts can be both challenging and rewarding. A lot of recent graduates or current students in the fields of humanitarian action and human rights aspire to fill a position at an international organization or a UN agency in the field of migration and asylum to help vulnerable people and defend a cause they strongly believe in.

Rahma Henchiri has been working with refugees for the past 5 years and is currently employed by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as an RSD / Protection Associate. In this brief interview, she will be talking about the daily life of a protection worker at UNHCR to give insight to all aspiring potential candidates for a similar position.

Hi Rahma! Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?

My name is Rahma and I like to present myself as a passionate humanitarian worker, dedicated to protection work in the field of asylum and refugees, among other relevant areas. My journey started in refugee camps in Greece from the very first days of the “migration crisis” in the Eastern Mediterranean route (Turkey – Greece). I gained my experience through working with different international and local organizations in Greece before moving to other countries. I have been working with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency for nearly two years now in two different duty stations. My main focus currently is on asylum law, child protection and SGBV within the refugee communities.

Protection is also referred to as the legal unit of UNHCR; and it is the core work of the organization. People working in protection usually have a legal background and use their knowledge and experience to apply refugee law and humanitarian law instruments in every day issues related to refugees.

Can you describe a typical day or week at work?

The main thing one needs to remember about being a protection associate is that it is divided into two parts. The biggest part is field work and the rest is office work and reporting, which most people who have already worked in the field would not be very thrilled about.

Let’s first talk about field work. Not only is it my favorite part of my job, but it is also the most challenging and surprising. As a protection field worker with UNHCR, you are always at the forefront. You are most of the time the first person that newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers meet, especially in the case of a boat rescue. You are there, most of the time on your own, and you are the only source of knowledge, and often hope, for new arrivals. You meet the community, together or individually, you give them information on who you are and what your title means. Persons of Concern to UNHCR (POCs) always need to fully understand what each person is doing, or rather what each person and each organization can provide them with. You are the ambassador of UNHCR; and depending on your location or duty station, you are required to explain in details what UNHCR does and does not in that specific context, what it can provide and what it cannot. It is extremely important to be clear, direct and honest from the very first encounter with the people, otherwise it will sooner or later come back to bite you! However, setting expectations properly is a skill that one can work on with time.

In the first encounter, the core of the message is reassuring people to put it in simple words, reassuring those who have left countries at war and human rights violations that they are now (finally) at a safe place, they have found peace and protection. Protection is the most used word in the protection unit. And although, when translated to certain languages, it sounds a little strange, you still find yourself using it to refer to everything that UNHCR does. It becomes a second nature!

Your main duty in working with new arrivals is counselling on asylum with a focus on other protection activities. A lot of the people who reach your location, having passed by a number of other countries beforehand and having lived atrocious experiences during their journey, might not even understand what asylum means, which is another thing a protection worker needs to be aware of: language! As I said earlier, protection staff are usually, but not always, lawyers or people who have studied or majored in a specific branch of law at some point in their academic life. Your understanding of some notions as a law practitioner might not be the same as that of someone who has spent their whole life in deprivation of any meaning of basic human rights or, worse, someone who has always lived in a lawless country to start with. Therefore, one of your responsibilities is also to ensure that you are using a simple language when explaining the asylum procedure to a potential refugee, especially in the beginning, so that you guarantee that all those in need of protection come forward and exercise their human right of seeking asylum in the country of arrival. Throughout my experience, there have been incidents in different countries where vulnerable people do not seek asylum just because they have not quite understood what it means or because they thought it had consequences on them in case the government in their country of origin received information on their whereabouts. Your duty as a protection staff member is to ensure no one is left behind without protection and that everyone is in a safe space in their country of asylum.

As a protection associate, you also are most likely responsible for individual cases, be it asylum seekers or recognized refugees. Depending on the duty station or the context in the region, the protection unit can have different focal points for specific issues regarding vulnerabilities and protection needs within the community of refugees and asylum seekers. The cornerstones of protection, which you would also find in almost every UNHCR operation or duty station, are Child Protection and SGBV (Sexual and Gender Based Violence), and those are, among others, my main areas of focus.

Working as a child protection and SGBV focal point is both intensely challenging and highly rewarding at the same time. Your work in these areas is mainly that of a caseworker. As I said earlier, you would be handling and following up on individual cases related to child protection and SGBV, while applying the relevant local, regional and international legal instruments and using a well-structured and fast referral system to the appropriate entities (NGOs, partners, government, other stakeholders…). A typical day in the life of a protection case worker is going to the camp, shelter or urban areas, wherever the refugee communities in your duty station are accommodated, and conducting what we call a “protection visit”: informally talking to the people, saying hi to those you have already seen before to let them know you do remember them and you are not just a passerby who would forget their issues the next day, you ask general questions about their problems or, as we refer to them internally, “protection needs”. You will be surprised of how many issues one single human being can have!

What I usually do during these visits is prioritize minors, especially unaccompanied minors and children, try to talk to them, joke around about everything and nothing. And from that informal encounter, a lot of issues are eventually raised by them, even unintentionally. I do the same with women and young girls. And being a woman myself, it has often been relatively easy to have intimate conversations in a women-only circle about their issues and protection concerns as women refugees and asylum seekers.

Then comes the second part of the job of a protection associate, which might seem like the less exciting part: reporting. Honestly, I have never been a fan of office jobs; it is just not for me. I have always been extremely productive in the field from my very first days of volunteering at various refugee camps around Greece. And I have never understood why there are people sitting at offices, typing vigorously on their keyboards from 9 to 5, while there are people in tremendous need of protection visits and practical solutions in camps 30 mins away from the office. It was only later that I understood the importance of keeping records of all incidents, numbers and individual cases I was handling on a day to day basis.

Let’s look at it like this: in one month for example, you meet around 100 people daily (which is the smallest number of people I met in one day in any of the countries I’ve worked in), that is 500 people per week. Among these 500 people, you listen to 350 individual stories, some would never open up in the beginning, others would just not have a specific need. Out of 350 individual stories, let us assume that 250 are women and children / minors; so you have 250 cases a week to work on as a focal point for child protection and SGBV. And let us again assume that only 150 cases are classified as prioritized, needing urgent referral and intervention. 150 cases a week, that is 600 cases a month. With no reporting or recording of case details and intervention plans, vulnerable people who are in urgent need of protection might not receive it. Reporting, although not the most interesting task to a lot of people, is the one tool you use to follow-up on cases, record trends in refugee communities and predict changes, and advocate with stakeholders and governments for a better situation. And who can do that better than the person who has heard these stories directly from the storyteller? Correct, no one.

What is the most challenging part of your job?

I think it goes without saying that being in constant contact with vulnerable people, people who have fled war and human rights violations and being at the receiving end of heartbreaking stories is the hardest part of my job. As much as I love this human contact and the moments I spend with people from different cultures and different backgrounds than mine, listening to their stories sometimes on the floor in a tent in an isolated camp, I find it extremely difficult to detach myself from these stories, especially if told by little children who most probably do not understand the gravity of what they are telling me. Any humanitarian worker is at risk of vicarious or secondary trauma, which I experienced two years ago and would never want to live through that again. However, the rewarding feeling you get and the smiles you see on peoples’ faces, knowing you contributed even slightly to their happiness, is worth every moment.

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