Featured Member: Elisabetta Brumat

What is your current organizational affiliation, your position and location of work? What are the current objectives that your department pursues?

I work for UNHCR, already for more than 9 years. For the last 7 years I have been a Protection Officer, based in Afghanistan, the North Caucasus, Chad, Sudan – both in Khartoum and Darfur - and now I am finishing my assignment in Sri Lanka. I am currently waiting for my next posting. My work is mainly concerned with situations of internal displacement, particularly with conflict-related displacement. Therefore I often face situations that are relevant to the current IHL discourse and debates. This is in line with UNHRC mandate, which aside from its traditional mandate of protection and assistance to refugees, has for some years now broadened its scope of action to include a more systematic focus on internally displaced persons (IDPs).

What are your main tasks on a day-to-day basis?

As a Protection Officer, I manage teams of international and national colleagues who carry out concrete protection activities, as UNHCR staff but often also in cooperation with other national and international actors (protection-mandated UN agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations). We engage in protection monitoring and interventions in favor of the affected populations, particularly those with specific needs, such as women, elderly, children, differently able persons, who are always the most affected in conflict and face the biggest challenges in post-conflict situations; we engage in advocacy work, at local and national levels; we conduct capacity-building activities on protection themes for national authorities. Apart from that, I also manage inter-organizational coordination in which UNHCR is engaged specifically at the field level in cases of complex emergencies, when the cluster approach comes into place. In those situations, I work to coordinate protection actors on behalf of the protection-cluster. In North Sri Lanka, and in East Chad and Sudan (Khartoum), for example, I chaired protection working groups aimed at designing coordinated strategies and interventions during emergencies. Within the cluster, protection actors also join advocacy efforts, both towards the international humanitarian system and the host government, to promote principles of protection of civilians in conflict, to prevent and respond to internal displacement, and to promote solutions to displacement situations. Advocacy within the crisis-affected country is then carried out at the highest levels through the Humanitarian Country Team led by the Humanitarian Coordinator.

Could you briefly describe your first professional experience in humanitarian action and the path that led you to your current position?

Before joining the UNHCR, from 1998 to 2002, I had worked with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the Balkans (Bosnia & Herzegovina and Macedonia). OSCE is not a humanitarian organization, but already at that time I worked in close contact with humanitarian actors. My work at the OSCE was different from my current assignments: it was primarily concerned with electoral assistance, local governance and political analysis. In 2002 I became a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) with UNHCR in Geneva. Initially I worked in the External Relations section, where I was tasked to convey and promote the UNHCR mission and operations to donors and advocate for more resources for the programmes. I soon determined, however, that I wanted to work on the ground, with the persons with whom our humanitarian work is actually concerned. At that time, UNHCR policy on engagement with conflict-affected IDPs was becoming more consolidated through the humanitarian reform and the cluster approach. This stimulated me to start thinking about increasing my expertise on IHL, which I find a very important complementary dimension to my knowledge of protection-related themes.

What do you particularly love about you work, what keeps you inspired?

It is the possibility to help people - at least to a certain extent - which keeps me motivated. Also, I love the challenges I find in advocating for the respect of the rights of civilians through engaging with both host-governments and – possibly – Non-State Actors. Another inspiring aspect of my work is the idea of cooperation between various protection actors: putting NGOs, the UN and other local civil society actors together to develop a common strategy, towards a common goal and acting with a unified advocacy voice to redress violations or promote human rights is an exciting challenge. And finally, it is the learning process that happens while working in difficult situations, which I appreciate, and the opportunity to learn about different cultures – both the ones of the host country and those of the people I work with.

What has been an important or very memorable experience in your professional life, and why?

There is one situation I will always remember. It was in the field in East Chad in 2007 during an IDP-emergency. The displacement was partially caused by a spill-over of the conflict in Darfur, but also by internal political and tribal struggles within Eastern Chad. The dynamic of the conflict was possibly similar to the one in Darfur: members of local tribes were displaced by what they perceived and generally defined as “Arab” tribes, with whom they had up to that time cohabited and shared resources. As lead of an emergency team, I made a determined effort to reach out to certain areas that were controlled by the tribes depicted as responsible for the attacks, in order to assess the reasons behind the polarization that eventually had caused the conflict and understand its dynamics. It was only the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and UNHCR that had ever entered this area. We were asked to stay and to meet with the village head. Thus we met with a very old person, who came surrounded by the children of the village; we were invited to sit and drink. This village elder tried to get a message across to us: “You should seek to understand the whole picture; my community is tired of being wrongfully labeled as attackers, as perpetrators, while the responsible parties actually come from other areas. We would like to talk to you and explain the dynamics of the conflict and our perspective more often.” Despite a relative presence of humanitarian agencies in the surroundings, this was the first time that this village had met someone from the international community. The children in the village, for instance, had not even been reached by the national anti-polio campaign, due to the diffidence that the local authorities had vis-à-vis communities that they perceived as being materially involved in the violence.

This encounter taught me to understand how important it is to seek a close relationship with the communities and be known by all sides in the context of a conflict. And also, it reminded me how important it is to act impartially – to look at the situation from different angles and to try to analyze the situation of each of the different actors.

I was very happy at that time about our decision to go towards this direction. And then there were also very powerful emotional impressions – this old man surrounded by children offering us to share his meal. This experience taught me important principles that I always try to follow: the importance to always look beyond the first superficial impression; and the importance to try to speak and interact with all of the actors on the ground.

The old “Chef de Tribu” was making a very important point: by praising us for our attempt to understand the different perspectives, he reminded us of the mistakes we might make out of lack of analysis and knowledge of the reality on the ground. In our work, we are often parachuted into new situations, sometimes with partial information. We still need to make an extra effort to thoroughly understand the context we are operating in, through analysis and groundwork. At that time in Chad, I felt really satisfied about the approach that we adopted as humanitarians and protection actors.

What do you experience as a professional challenge?

Working in certain situations, including several of those where I worked, which are difficult environments in which to carry out humanitarian protection work – mainly for reasons related to the context and the attitude of the authorities vis-à-vis protection. It is difficult in such situations to coordinate protection actors and keep the group together. The government often tries to limit humanitarian access and the permission to work in areas of conflict or even sometimes to carry out protection-related projects in the immediate aftermath of a conflict. The great challenge in such situations is to keep consistency and principled action with common advocacy-messages and uphold with evidence and perseverance what protection work is about and why it is needed. Only if we maintain our principles do we have the possibility to succeed in such difficult contests. The group of humanitarian actors has to stand united behind a common, strong advocacy point, otherwise we will get defeated. The government tries to win by blocking some actors and silencing others by trading access.

Another challenge is to keep the attention of the donor community and their support for core humanitarian principles. Donor governments are often a powerful constituency in many contexts where humanitarians work vis-à-vis the military and other parties to the conflict, or where human rights questions are of concern. Host governments often challenge and may divide the international community. The challenge is to highlight the importance of a common respect for humanitarian and human rights principles. This is particularly crucial as more and more often humanitarians are perceived as associated with other actors, most notably the governments of their donors or countries of origin. Finally, it is the gap between the field reality and the headquarters, which sometimes I perceive as a challenge. At the central level an elaborated thinking process on protection principles, policies and tools is going on, and it is very important that this is tied also to the realities on the ground. In general, I find it a good idea to maintain an entire segment of the humanitarian community dedicated to the setting of policies and the production of harmonized tools and guidelines. There is experience and expertise to provide these services, as part of the roles assigned within the context of the humanitarian reform and the cluster approach. It is very important that the dialogue continues between the central levels and the field, and that policies, tools and guidelines are developed in dialogue with the staff on the ground.

How far have you been able to maintain a normal personal life during your career? How important is social life and connections with colleagues to build resilience in the field?

Well, it is often difficult to find a balance between professional and personal life in this profession. This is really one of the greatest challenges, in my opinion. But it really depends on the context and on one’s personality, how difficult one may find it to carve out space for oneself. Personally, I am not good at this, but I cannot only blame the field. It really much depends on one’s own ability to find a way to make this space.

On the other hand, this work has the potential to bond people very strongly in friendship. Generally, I believe that people feel more connected in field contexts while facing common challenges. I have seen great teams that were formed in field – the work in the field is often an occasion to bond and to develop a deep professional relationship. The flipside of this is that it is difficult to maintain a normal personal life after work – not even to speak of a family. Clearly, a humanitarian organization working in the deep field should give its employees the chance to balance between hardship and more convenient locations of work, where a healthy work-life balance is more possible. I think this aspect is important for humanitarian organizations, as it is an incentive for people to continue – especially also staff at higher management levels. By the time the staff members acquire seniority and advanced managerial skills, they should not be burnt out and feeling the need to stop. Those complex situations in which we work today require personnel with expertise. An organization needs to give an incentive to its senior-staff to continue to serve in the field. If it did this in a consequent way, it would have a very positive effect regarding the success of the work.

Which book currently lies on your bedside table?

What I read really depends on where I am: during work assignments, I read mostly working papers, policy materials on protection, including IHL, guidelines, legislation and analytical reports about the country I work in – also in my free time. This is not a very healthy regime, I know. When I am on holiday, however, my favourite authors are Khaled Hosseini and Andrea Camilleri. The ‘Kite Runner’ by Khalid Hosseini is one of the most touching books I ever read, especially after having worked in Afghanistan. A pure fun author, on the other hand, is Andrea Camilleri, a very famous and prolific Italian contemporary writer, and old Sicilian man. He writes thrillers and the protagonist is a Sicilian Police Chief – a “Commissario” – named Montalbano. Camilleri produces one to two books per year, and this is good, because I can swallow such a book in a day. His books are more than mafia or criminal stories; they are a great intelligent laugh. I would be very interested to see how his humor and the Sicilian-style Italian language he uses in his narration have been translated into English – Italian-speakers are quite advantaged in this case, I suppose.

Could you give a description of PHAP in one sentence?

PHAP is a resource, a point of reference with regard to important aspects to consider in assessing current humanitarian issues and discourses and while operating in the field of humanitarian assistance and protection. PHAP helps us to conceptualize issues and challenges that we often encounter in our everyday work, and gives us the opportunity to compare our views with those of other practitioners in the field of humanitarian work. PHAP is thus a platform that provides us with the opportunity to increase our own knowledge and expertise, to state problems that we face and discuss them with other professionals. As the issues that are tackled by IHL and are subject to humanitarian work are in constant evolution, a constant exchange and debate about them is very important. In one sentence: PHAP is a community of practice and learning.