SIERRA LEONE
A. The context
In 2011, I moved from Deputy Representative in Kenya to Representative in Sierra Leone. The new Director of the Bureau for Africa, George Okoth-Obbo, informed me that this step was designed to give me time to rest after a hectic Kenya operation. Sierra Leone, he said, was a sunset operation (exact words), and my role was to ensure smooth closing of operations and of presence in that country. I did just that, although the office remained open for another couple of years more until it finally closed.
Sierra Leone was a very small operation. In effect, I felt that very poignantly in my body adrenaline upon arrival: From Kenya with a budget of 125 million $ in the year I left, to one with $340,000. From receiving and sorting over 300 mails per day in Kenya, which obliged me to adopt a way of managing them (deciding which to delete, which to take home to read later, which required immediate action, response or just read - some colleagues just copy you on their mail so you know that they are working!) to less than 4 mails per day in Sierra Leone! Within the first half hour in the office, I would have read all, including all the attachments, I would have said hello to all staff in their cubicles, if they arrived before me. I came to understand that I could take my tea at home tranquil, because there was no pressure at all. I had all the time to attend all the coordination meetings of a UN Mission that was winding down. I never missed one because there were no exigencies of work.
B. The refugees
There were two or three dozen Liberian refugees that had remained in the country since 1997, long after repatriation and were expecting resettlement to America. For them, it was either America or nothing. Particularly since cessation of refugee status had been declared for them, during my stay, I visited Guinea where some Liberians were also waiting to be resettled, (a few Ivorian refugees also thought of resettlement, but with much less sense of entitlement than the Liberian).
The vociferous refugees would not be pacified with a resettlement program that was run from Senegal, and during my entire stay, there was no visit of the resettlement team. The reasons for their continued claim to refugee status had ceased to exist. Another small group had settled peacefully in a piece of land given by the government, and were attempting to be self-sufficient. Except that all those years of humanitarian assistance and complete dependence on UNHCR still showed in their mentality: they showed me a list of demands and of promises that UNHCR had made in 2000 and not kept, well recorded in their old torn pieces of paper.
What solution? I insisted with all refugees to stop dreaming of resettlement or continued UNHCR presence, and work more for themselves because there was no more justification for a refugee situation. With the help of ECOWAS, a small grant was obtained to support local integration projects. Urban refugees on the other hand, would have to understand with more time that resettlement had run its course. And that the office was closing.
C. The staff
It was my duty to inform all staff in Freetown and Kenema that the office was closing, and that I was the last Representative they would see. And that they had one year to prepare. I made myself available to all staff individually, to see in what manner the office could help. One for instance, only wanted the carcasses of UNHCR vehicles to mount a garage and start his repair business, this was his skill. Others looked for alternatives in banks, and a few did not have real alternatives. As I managed the end of an office, I still kept an emotional attachment to the staff, who continued to work until the end. Such attachment allowed me to offer opportunities to three of them in another country, using my own position and influence, and today two of them are international.
However, I cannot resist the temptation to narrate other staff dramas on the subject of office closure. I encountered two of the local staff in Guinea: This country had seen three huge refugee operations, first with the Liberian, then Sierra Leonean and then the Ivorian refugees. At each point, with the solution of each group, offices were closed, and local staff reduced through a process called comparative reviews. I met two drivers whose contracts had been terminated with the first repatriation and closure of a few offices: they had done six years with UNHCR, and therefore at the termination, they received their contribution to the pension in one lumpsum: a lumpsum looks substantial until you start spending! One said he had a father who was very ill, and without insurance, he spent most of the lumpsum in caring for the father. The father still died, but he had exhausted his money. Fortunately, three years later, with the next influx, he was re-employed by UNHCR. After five years, the operation ended with another repatriation, and once more he was terminated and the new office also closed. Another lumpsum was paid to him since he had resumed contribution to the pension. This time, he invested in chickens and goats. Do you still have the goats? No, he said, because between marriages, birthdays funerals, and a son who wrecked a neighbour’s uninsured car, the family was looking up to him. This encounter with him was the third time he was employed by UNHCR and started again contributing to the pension. How long before you retire? He said: three years. And how long have you been contributing this third time? Two years, he said. So, he was given his lumpsum twice, he spent all, and now he was facing a prospect of retirement with just five years of contribution to the pension. What social security would this person have? Will he have accumulated reasonably enough for a reasonable retirement?
Such are some of the human dramas that remain invisible but exist.
D. Any Lessons?
1. The human face of closing an operation was for me the most violent experience: Never underestimate the economic, financial, and emotional cost of closure on the staff and their families. And the subterfuges people will find to postpone such an outcome, at their level.
2. Closure or keeping a foot at the door? The fact that I was sent from Sierra Leone to Niger, where I found that UNHCR had just closed the office two years previously, and now we were reopening, was a major lesson: We are all about durable solutions and the end of operations. However, the way we close presence leaves our partner governments with a mixed sentiment. Closure need not mean the end of relations with a government that has been protecting refugees. It is my contention that Sierra Leone and Guinea, where we had no operations during my time, could very well have been managed as a multi-country sinecure from a neighbouring country with real operations. The Representative in Liberia could cover Guinea and Sierra Leone, in the same way as Ghana could cover Togo and Benin, as consulates, unless new situations required revamping. Keeping a foot at the door would prove important in keeping the dialogue with government going and avoiding the new-kid-in-the-block syndrome, as my next emergency experience in Niger turned out (my next article).
3. Declaration of cessation should not be normal business, as it vitiates other refugee situations, particularly where governments, for political expediency, can use that against the protection of refugees. That is in retrospect the case that
I lived in Tanzania, where government officials, ignorant of the complexity of the concept, use it nonetheless as if they understood it. Our experience with the cessation of status for Sierra Leonean or for Rwandan refugees should be documented and used as reference material. Unfortunately, these lessons are not being codified in the organization (at least not by the time I retired). Staff in other operations are having to reinvent (if they do at all).
4. Maybe the most important lesson for me, Sierra Leone has taught me to rationalize ambitions and pare down the estimation of my own capacities: now I know that what others say about me is noise pollution. Being Representative in a very small operation was the best way of passing from Deputy Representative to that ambassadorial and managerial and political position of Representation. It gave me the opportunity to learn the details of such a high diplomatic and management function, with very limited impact of any damage my shortcomings could have had. In later postings, Sierra Leone was for me an ante-chamber to becoming a real Representative, empathetic, honest and human, efficient. It prepared me to perform better the role of Representative in subsequent postings (Chad, Nigeria, Tanzania).
Jose, 23 July 2023
Comments