Refugees his life’s work

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Refugees his life’s work
INTAN MAIZURA AHMAD KAMAL





After more than a decade away, the head of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Paul Alan Vernon, tells INTAN MAIZURA AHMAD KAMAL he’s glad to be back where he started

HIS handshake is firm and his eyes twinkle as he welcomes me into his spacious home in leafy Lingkungan U-Thant. There are beautiful paintings adorning the walls (“…my wife’s handiwork,” he proudly discloses) and just by the wooden side-table, copies of the Herald Tribune lie in a neat pile.

It’s obvious that American Paul Alan Vernon, the new KL head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is making himself right at home, having arrived two months ago with his family.

But, as he quickly points out, this is not his first time in the country. “This is a return to the place where I started my career with the UNHCR.”

The affable 55-year-old, whose hobbies include tennis, reading and going for walks, says: “Malaysia is special for a number of reasons. My first assignment with UNHCR, back in 1987, was in Pulau Bidong, Kuala Terengganu. I was a field officer and worked with the Malaysian Red Crescent Society and the police to deal with the Vietnamese refugee situation.

“It was also a time of large-scale resettlement. Pulau Bidong was a camp where people could find sanctuary and safety. Because it was an island, it required a lot of support from the mainland, so that’s what we did.”

It was also in Malaysia that he met his wife who was working in the camp as a social worker. “She’s Vietnamese, but her family had left Vietnam in 1975 and resettled in the US. Interestingly enough, we’re both from Pennsylvania and we met here! So for those reasons it’s been good to come back.”

As the head of UNHCR, Vernon’s job scope has changed. Heading a team of more than 100 people, he’s overseeing an operation that has changed somewhat. Although there are no longer any camps today, refugees are still pouring into the country. And as in the past, “…we try to make sure they’re protected, and have an opportunity to live as normal a life as possible,” he explains.

“We register the refugees and conduct status determination to check whether they qualify as a refugee. Then we work for resettlement. We also support programmes in health and education, do community development to support the refugee communities and work closely with our partners. We want to encourage the government to continue to provide support for refugees and maybe to make that situation a little bit more regular.”

The refugee situation is always a challenge for any country to deal with, adds Vernon, who cites his family and the opportunity to do interesting work as factors that drive him.

“There are more than 10 million refugees around the world. If you count people who have been displaced inside their country, the number is closer to 35 million. In Malaysia, there are 45,000 who are registered and 90 per cent are from Myanmar.”

Basic needs remain. Families who are separated want to be reunited. The children need to go to school, people need to work and solutions need to be found.

“They need to know that their lives are on hold and that hopefully, they’d be able to go home because that’s the best solution for them,” he says.

What if they can’t?

He pauses. “That’s really tough because most of the time they want to go home. They’re not like migrants who leave their country in search of a better life. A migrant is not a refugee. A refugee has been forced to leave his home because of circumstances such as human rights abuses, conflicts and non-acceptance by the government because of religious or political beliefs or ethnic group. It’s also a challenge for us to recognise migrants, not only here, but around the world, because there are many of them.”

Proficient in four languages — English, French, Thai and Laotian — this father of two boys aged 14 and 10, thrives on the challenges that come with the job.

“It’s interesting. You’re essentially dealing with the by-product of issues that you read about on the front pages of the newspapers – conflicts and human rights problems. It’s all really compelling and very real. On the other hand, you also have the opportunity to encounter really remarkable people — refugees and the wonderful people helping them.”

Vernon’s first encounter with refugees was in 1979 when Vietnamese refugees were being resettled in the US. “I was teaching at a secondary school and part time at a university. I also volunteered to teach English to Vietnamese refugees for a year.”

He later opted to go overseas as a Peace Corp volunteer in Thailand doing development work, teacher training as well as carrying out community projects. He recalls: “During that period, between 1980 and 1983, there were Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian refugees coming to Malaysia and where I was, there were refugee camps not far away. So I stayed on in Thailand and worked with the refugees for four years.”

When he eventually got back to the US, Vernon thought it was the end of his work with the refugees. “Then I learned of an opportunity in the US State Department which was looking for people to go overseas and work with UNHCR in a programme called the Junior Professional Officer Programme. That’s how I got to Malaysia,” he says, chuckling.

“After that I had a year-long contract, and then another year-long contract — from Malaysia to Sri Lanka and to Geneva. Pretty soon it was 21 years. It wasn’t a life choice to begin with. In many ways, this work found me.”