Human Rights Reporting

Spring 2001 Student Work

Aid worker must pick and choose who can be a legal refugee: “It’s like playing God. Sometimes I hate it.”

By Amy Rubin

After their mother and father were murdered, six newly orphaned children traveled by boat and by bus from the Congo to Zambia in search of refuge. After arriving in Lusaka, they slept outside the local YMCA for 14 days, among dozens of other refugees seeking assistance. It seemed obvious to Erin Corcoran, a refugee aid worker, that the children—whose lives were at risk by their association with the slain parents—should be granted permission to leave Africa and be resettled with their adult cousin in Canada.

“They have so many needs,” Corcoran said, “They need to be held, need to deal with grief, and they need food.”

But it was not obvious if the three boys and three girls would receive permission to go to Canada. Corcoran, who graduated a year ago from Georgetown University’s law school, came to realize that bureaucratic paperwork and personalities could prevent the children’s eventual resettlement. In fact, many of the 250,000 refugees in Zambia will not be successful in their quest to immigrate to another continent.

In early February, Corcoran arrived as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Lusaka. During her two-month special assignment in Africa, she was asked to identify and recommend 100 refugees for resettlement in the United States or Canada.

“It’s like playing God,” Corcoran said, “sometimes I hate it.”

She added: “I know it is better to resettle some rather than none, but the choosing part is killing me.”

After she chooses refugees as candidates for resettlement, the forms are sent to the Nairobi UNHCR office in Kenya and, if approved, forwarded to the embassies of the destination countries. If the forms are sent to the United States, Corcoran’s recommendations of refugees still need to be approved on a case-by-case basis by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Resettlement is considered the option of last resort after first trying to repatriate refugees to the home country or integrate them into the host country—such as Zambia, where many who are fleeing civil war in Angola and the Congo have sought shelter in recent years. Basic considerations for resettlement include whether the person is defined as a refugee, according to internationally-recognized protocols; whether the refugee presently faces physical security concerns; and whether a refugee was a victim of torture, or is experiencing a medical condition that cannot be treated in the home or host country.

In her full-time job back in Manhattan, Corcoran is an attorney at Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). She represents refugees who have made their own way across the United States border, such as arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport, to seek “asylum” status. In contrast, “resettlement” is considered a humanitarian act by one country in helping another country to relieve its overcrowding of refugees. Both types of refugees are eligible for work permits, legal residency and eventually citizenship in the United States.

Corcoran, 28, was born in New Mexico and, as a result of her father’s military career, grew up in a variety of cities in the Midwest, on the East Coast and even in Germany. Her interest in helping refugees—she calls them “the most marginalized people in the world”—stems from her civic-minded parents.

“I try to see people for people,” she said, “and do work that dignifies them. I feel that it’s my duty. ”

In Lusaka, Corcoran had no trouble finding people to whom she could offer help. In fact, the refugees found her, whether coming to the UNHCR office or approaching her on the street.

“People know that I’m the white American girl here to resettle refugees,” Corcoran said. “When I go outside to get a Coke, 10 refugees want to talk about resettlement.”

Knowing that she could only recommend 100 refugees for resettlement, Corcoran often was faced with awkward decisions. “It’s a balancing of hardships,” she explained, “and a moral quagmire. Who’s starving the most?”

The six orphans, ranging from 5 to 17 years old, were of urgent concern to Corcoran. She worried that the children needed special protection because of their minority ethnic background. They are members of the Banyamulenge clan—Congolese nationals of Tutsi origin. They could not be housed with other Congolese refugees in refugee camps, because Banyamulenges are seen as allied with the rebel forces that oppose Congo President Joseph Kabila’s government. In addition, the Banyamulenges could not be placed with the many Rwandans who fled to Zambia, because of the historic strife between Hutus and Tutsis.

The parents of these six youths reportedly were murdered because of their ethnicity. Corcoran concluded that placing the children in one of Zambia’s five refugee camps would have further endangered them.

The fate of the children appeared to depend on whether a death certificate could be found for the father, who was thought to have been kidnapped and killed more recently than the mother. “If there’s no proof of death,” Corcoran said, “I can’t recommend these kids for resettlement.”

The restrictive resettlement requirements were not the only frustrations on Corcoran’s mind. What she considered more problematic was the apathy among longtime refugee workers in the country. She sensed that one of her supervisors considers his career more important than the livelihoods of the children; if the father was later found to be alive and the six children had been resettled on false grounds, the supervisor worried that he could be fired.

After interviewing between 10 to 20 refugees per day, Corcoran found herself becoming desensitized to some of the tragic stories. But she said that longtime staffers such as her supervisor are not only desensitized but also focused on the progression of their careers within UNHCR, which is considered one of the most prestigious, high paying employers in the area. Corcoran said that, concerning the missing death certificate of the children’s father, her supervisor told her: “It’s better to do nothing than to try to help them.”

On occasion, Corcoran felt harassed by refugees—people to whom she devoted her legal studies. She said that she could imagine how refugee aid workers might be tempted to take bribes from refugees. She learned of bribes that refugees gave to other refugees—to those in a position of leadership within the refugee community.

By the time she left Zambia in early April, Corcoran reached her goal of selecting 100 refugees for resettlement. But she only had enough time to fully process 50 of the applications. Since UNHCR is already short-staffed and there are no immediate plans to replace her, Corcoran estimates that the other 50 applications will not be processed for another six to eight months.

Included in Corcoran’s 100 recommendations were the six Congolese children. After her return to New York, Corcoran continues to follow up on their status. They are safe at present, living in an orphanage in Zambia. But the matter of the missing death certificate may prove to be an insurmountable hurdle, according to Corcoran. She plans to do what she can from afar to help move their case forward.

“Certain clients just touch you,” she said.

With insights from working in the field, Corcoran returned to her job at HIAS with a heightened awareness of refugee issues.

“I think I’m profoundly changed,” she said. “It’s left a permanent imprint on my psyche.”

Back in New York, Corcoran resumed the cases she had been handling before she left town.

“With the job at HIAS, you see more things get resolved and come full swing,” Corcoran reflected. “You have more repeated contact with clients, and more control over the process. At UNHCR, you’re just a cog in the wheel.”

But still she sees her African journey as instrumental to her future work with refugees.

“I think I’ll be a more effective advocate now,” she said, “as I try to translate experiences in Africa back to my work here.”

One of her clients at HIAS is a 16-year-old boy from Algeria, who was orphaned at age 10 when his parents were killed in what seemed to be an act of random terrorist violence. The young man’s father had conducted business with French companies and apparently was perceived by Islamic fundamentalists as a traitor to Algeria.

Corcoran’s client Osama—which is not his real name—was harassed and beaten in Algeria. Now, since arriving to the United States on October 23, 2000, he has been detained at the Wackenhut Detention Center in Queens. He has been kept in detention as an adult because the INS’s dental exam indicated that he is at least 18 years old.

Asylum seekers who are kept in detention are “treated as criminals,” according to Corcoran. “People who are guards are not well trained and don’t understand what political asylum is. They see themselves as gatekeepers of a prison facility.”

Yet, rather than fight the INS on its decision about Osama’s age, Corcoran focused on preparing for his asylum hearing in front of an INS judge. The hearing took place last week, but the decision will not be announced until Friday of this week.

Corcoran said it was not easy preparing Osama to give a detailed account of his past at the INS hearing. But after her trip to Africa, she has a better understanding of how to communicate with Osama.

“I had not been recognizing cultural differences,” she said. “I hadn’t really seen why refugees are hesitant to talk.”

When she interviewed refugees in Zambia, whether in her office or at the refugee camps, it often felt as if she was dragging information out of them.

“One of the problems I found is that they don’t tell stories in a detailed way,” she said. According to Corcoran, a refugee will often say, “ ‘Bad things happened; I don’t want to talk about it.’ ”

But Corcoran had to remind them that their refugee status “depends on being able to articulate their experiences.”

Osama’s Arabic interpreter provided Corcoran with another explanation for Osama’s shyness, especially concerning the hardships he endured as an orphan living on the streets.

“I was told by the interpreter,” Corcoran said, “that An Arab man will always be embarrassed in front of me, a woman.”

And yet in Africa, Corcoran felt that some refugees opened up to her more because she is a woman.

Reflecting on what she learned in Africa about the possibilities and limitations of refugee assistance work, she said, “It didn’t make me more optimistic, but it also didn’t make me want to help any less. I did realize that my help was not as powerful as I thought it was.”

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