(this photo is a picture of me concentrating very hard in class today… sorry for all the self portraits - the only camera i have is the one built into my computer!)
Whooooa nelly. Yesterday was one of the most extreme days of my entire life. The previous day, all 150 or so of us had been allocated roles: NGOs, medical personnel, food programs, security, media, guerrilla forces, political players, and of course a large refugee population. I was appointed Prime Minister of ‘Abenia’, the country bordering ‘Cedania’, into which tens of thousands of refugees were flooding after a major military strike by the Cedanian government on its own civilian population.
So… having no idea what we were getting ourselves into, we got on the buses at 8.30, like little humanitarian lambs to the slaughter! We were driven out to this huge paddock in the middle of the Swedish countryside, in the middle of which sat a big yellow tent. All the NGOs and governments etc came down into the region, and we were informed that about 20,000 refugees were on their way, many of them injured, traumatised, starving, carrying their sick and wounded. Well crap. So, everything swung into action. I had had a planning meeting with my government the night before (14 people in our cabin which is only just big enough for 4!!! Crazy!!), figuring out the structures of responsibility throughout various government departments and players. So immediately we met with all the heads of NGOs and informed them that they were to register with us, report to us and co-ordinate their efforts through us.
Anyway the day progressed crazily. I will not give you an entire narrative outline, however I will give you some bullet points of the stuff we had to deal with:
• Outbreaks of cholera
• Warring ethnic factions
• The overthrow of the Cedanian government by 2 rebel factions (while the government was out to lunch!)
• This meant that the Abenian government (my colleagues & I) began to negotiate the safe and secure repatriation of the refugees back over the border to Cedania
• The refugees cracked it and decided to leave the camp, hiking out over the mountains into Cedania before we had established a plan regarding food, health, sanitation, water, shelter, security etc.
• When they did this, there was a massive earthquake, and they were trapped in the mountains, with 2000 dead, and many more wounded.
• We then sent in some representatives over the border to retrieve the refugees and promise that they would be taken care of and safely repatriated in due course.
• The refugees eventually returned to the Camp and we began the repatriation process.
Things I personally had to deal with because some eejit designated me Prime Minister:
• Constant pestering by the press
• Threats by the Cedanian government that if we don’t extradite ‘terrorists’ (whom, incidentally, we considered to be refugees) back to Cedania, that government would attack the camp
• Corruption in my police force (sacked ‘em), and a corrupt Minister for Defence (whom I had trusted!), who had been ordering the rape, assault and murders of a number of the refugee population (sacked him too!)
• I ordered the arrest of the former Cedanian government for war crimes and crimes against humanity – they were taken to the International Criminal Court, but kept escaping from jail and raising hell (which I think was somewhat outside the rules of the game…!)
• … and much much more!
Anyway the day was absolutely massive. Crazy. I haven’t written much detail, because I was writing lots about it, and then my computer crashed and I lost the document. Annoying. Anyway, the day finished and we got on the bus and went to the Goteborgs Nations to eat dinner. Then a few of us went around the corner to another Nations for a quiet beer, and then we went HOME TO BED. Sweet! But… we were up again this morning and on the buses at 8.30am to come to class. It’s getting a bit much… heaps of people are getting sick, everyone’s tired, we’ve had a pretty full-on 9 days. It’s Wednesday now, and I’ve gotta say I’m hanging out for the weekend…!
Looking forward to getting settled and exploring the funness of Dublin.
OK that’s enough for now!
Oh one more thing – spending time in an academic setting with people from such diverse backgrounds (development, geology, medicine, anthropology, political science, etc) is making me realise how much I think like a lawyer. I had never really noticed, but now it’s becoming more and more clear to me… interesting.
5 comments:
Well I am stupid, but funny. I was looking over Tim's shoulder (My hubby as you know, but others may not) and I was reading this post of yours. At first I was just skimming and then I was reading intently...Gosh I though "our Jessie is doing some crazy stuff. This is amazing!" I turned to Tim and preceded to go on about how impressed I was at what our Jessie was doing overseas...managing the press, taking threats from the Cedanian Government (Whoever they were I though??), putting up with refugees who kept wandering off...earthquakes...having people arrested!
Tim of course just looked at me, staring and wondering how the heck he could have married someone so stupid...."Its a game" he said..."This is not real, she’s talking about a game she was playing!"
Ooops that must have been the bit I skimmed over.
Idiot...
*laughing from post above*
*serious* What do you mean you 'think like a laywer', Jess?
Things I've realised:
- studying law has made me see problems more than opportunities
- studying law has made me risk averse!
- studying law has given my very scattered mind, with an immense tendency to wander, some focus...
Your turn!
haha janice you're a cack and i love you!! thanks for the vote of confidence though... ;)
bec, i'm not sure exactly what i mean. i know that i see a lot of things in technicalities now, whereas before i might have seen them in generalities. i ask questions, try to identify gaps, loopholes, contradictions, and if they exist i will explore the feasibility of exploiting them. interestingly, this game actually opened up what is a gap in my knowledge in the refugee law (perhaps a gap in the law??). Question: what is the status of people who have fled their country into a neighbouring country because they are refugees under Article 1 of the Convention, and the situation in their home country resolves itself, so that the persecution no longer exists? Obviously by the book, after a certain period of time they will no longer fit the definition of a refugee... And if per se they go back into their country and (hypothetically) meet an earthquake so have to come BACK to the neighbouring country, what is their status? EXTERNALLY displaced people? to what extent does the alteration of their status change the mandate of agencies such as the UNHCR?
obviously not expecting answers to this! i asked a full room of people (140!) if anyone had any thoughts on this, and the best thing that came back was a slightly feeble response about how they *are* still refugees. no reason given.
ha - long comment. and on my own blog, too...!
jt
That's so true, Jess - at least when we're talking about "rights", anyway - and rights are obviously important to any aspect of humanitarian action.
I wrote an article for IJMED that was borne out of my frustration with academics merely asserting that there was a link between sources of vulnerability and human rights - as a lawyer, my response to that stuff is always "yeah good - but what do we DO about that? How can we mobilise the law to actually reduce vulnerability?"
This isn't confined to lawyers, of course - an engineer working on an engineering issue would approach it differently to the way you and I would. But given that I have an extremely scattered mind and tend to think in generalisations, I like the fact that law has enhanced my ability to think specifically and practically.
oh, whoops - I meant to respond to something else -
I really know nothing about refugee law etc - but I think that I've seen some work on persons displaced by natural disasters - I'd have a look at the disaster management journals in addition to law journals. You might also like to see whether COHRE (www.cohre.org) has done anything - I've had conversations with people about it, but I don't know whether they've written anything.
You might find that there's scope for an article there, Jess!
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