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Shannon Meehan is the Director for Advocacy for the International Rescue Committee and has spent more than 17 years working in conflict zones around the world. The former Peace Corp volunteer speaks to Jerry Fowler about the mission and involment of the International Rescue Committe and her work with refugees around the world. Shannon discusses her recent trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and her mission to increase grassroots awareness in the United States regarding Congo.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Shannon Meehan. She is Director for Advocacy of the International Rescue Committee, and has spent more than 17 years working in conflict zones around the world. She is an expert on the humanitarian and protection needs of displaced populations and refugees. Shannon, welcome to the program.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Thanks for having me.
JERRY FOWLER: Well Shannon, I wanted to start, we have had guests from a lot of different organizations, and it occurred to me that sometimes it is not really clear what these organizations do in the grand scheme of things. International Rescue Committee is a very well known humanitarian organization. Actually, its roots are in the refugee crisis before the Holocaust in the 1930s when Jews and other targets of the Nazis were trying to leave Nazi-controlled Europe. But let me as you, kind of in broad swaths, what does the International Rescue Committee do? What is its mission?
SHANNON MEEHAN: Our mission is twofold. Predominately, we work with refugees and displaced peoples internationally. We work in more than 25 countries in the world that have suffered conflict or refugee population movement. And so places like Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, West Africa, Central African Republic, Indonesia, etc. And in addition to the overseas work, and when we are overseas during the emergency phase of a conflict or an immediate out flux of refugees or displaced people, we provide what I have always termed as life saving action, so emergency medical assistance is very high on our priority list. Water and sanitation, meeting the basic needs of what people need with water and sanitary necessities. There is also then, if the refugee population or displaced people have to be organized in a camp, it is extremely important how we organize that camp. And so the International Rescue Committee has always been involved in camp management, which then gets into the intricacies of protection. And not protection necessarily in that direct, security guard sense. But protection in, does everybody have equal access to the basic life saving services? Do they have access to medical care? Do they have access to the water? Do they have access to shelter? Is everyone covered under those basics? And then, as conflicts unfortunately, possibly protract and stay a long time in a country, then the IRC, the International Rescue Committee, tries to work on education for children, so that an entire generation is not lost. So education in emergencies is also a high priority for the International Rescue Committee. And then in addition to the overseas work, we also work domestically in the United States. We actually have offices in more than 25 cities around the United States. We kind of follow the whole east-west coast, south coast perimeters. And we help resettle refugees to the United States. And that is actually where we were founded in 1933, was helping people escape Europe, and resettle them to the United States. We continue to do that, 75 years later. The United States is one of the most generous countries in the world for resettling people that really have nowhere to go-- the lucky ones, really, because less than one percent of refugees are resettled to a third country, which is allowed by international law. So we also then help when a family arrives. It’s how to function in the United States, what does a checking account, banking account, telephone bills, English school for the children, how to manage an apartment, rent, job seeking skills, all of those things that we assist them to make them feel comfortable and an active participant in the U.S. society. And they tend to become flourished, hard working citizens as they continue to live in the United States.
JERRY FOWLER: Just to kind of sum up maybe the timeline for a refugee. A refugee is someone who leaves their country because of fear of persecution or for some other reasons.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Or war.
JERRY FOWLER: And war, conflict. So they flee into another country. And then as you say, in many cases, they need emergency services. And then usually they end up in camps. And then some lucky numbers of them who are in the camps eventually are resettled to third countries, and the United States is one country that takes in refugees. How long is that timeline? When people get to the United States, how long have they generally been refugees?
SHANNON MEEHAN: Well, probably on average, sometimes it is a minimal two years, sometimes it can be long as 10 or 15 years. I have personally dealt with a lot of the Liberian refugees who have resettled. And they had been refugees since 1989, and they resettled in 2002. During the Kosovo crisis, it was very quick. A Presidential decree allowed 20,000; it was a matter of months. It really depends on how quickly the bureaucracy can work, and how quickly the identification and interview process can get through and the numbers that the United States allows to come in. Because we are dealing with many countries around the world in which the United States accepts refugees.
JERRY FOWLER: You mentioned doing emergency medical assistance, and I just have to say that brings up a very vivid memory for me. On my first trip to Chad to see Sudanese refugees, I ended up in this place called Bahai, which was like the edge of nowhere. 120 degrees, there were 10,000 people. It was right on the border. 10,000 exhausted, sick, tired, hungry--
SHANNON MEEHAN: Dehydrated.
JERRY FOWLER: --thirsty, dehydrated people. And all they had basically was an IRC doctor and a couple of protection people. And so I guess, to me that is emergency medical assistance.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Yes, everybody gangs in, we get a doctor, and everybody comes in and starts looking and doing triage. And then now, I am happy to say, though, the Bahai hospital is fully functioning through International Rescue Committee’s work.
JERRY FOWLER: And they have a camp there, too. Or actually maybe two camps, is it one or two?
SHANNON MEEHAN: We have a camp there, I think there are two. And we are working closely with the Ministry of Health trying to capacity build, make it more sustainable. So yeah, in the first, it seems chaotic, but it is actually quite organized. And people are responding. You prioritize the needs about water, dehydration, easily preventable diseases. We try to lessen their impact as quickly as possible.
JERRY FOWLER: How did you get involved in this work?
SHANNON MEEHAN: Throughout my entire life, even when I was a little kid, I was always involved in community service, and especially throughout high school and college. And at the end of my college years, I always loved to travel, and I joined the Peace Corps. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal in the late ‘80s. And so that was just a natural extension of the community service desire that I had already built in. And so I just took it internationally. I have done both the development side of the international business and the for-profit of international business. And I have found that there is nothing more satisfying or rewarding than assisting internally displaced people and refugees. They are the most resilient, incredibly dynamic people I have met in my life-- people that have gone through this type of trauma and then survived through it, and are trying to rebuild their life. It is fascinating to be a part of their life.
JERRY FOWLER: But at the same time, as you have kind of suggested, a lot of these situations, they get dragged out for a long time. People spend-- they can spend their whole life in displacement or certainly never get to go home. Does that not get a little difficult to deal with after a while?
SHANNON MEEHAN: Sure, there are ups and downs in this business. When you think something’s going to finally break, a peace agreement or people are going to be able to go home. I will take West Africa as an example. At one point, Guinea hosted more than 1,000,000 refugees inside Guinea coming from Sierra Leone and Liberia. And we had a program where I was assisting a lot of women, and loan programs and economic livelihood opportunities. And there was a break where Charles Taylor was freely and fairly elected.
JERRY FOWLER: As President of Liberia.
SHANNON MEEHAN: As President of Liberia. And there was a lot of hope. People started going back to the Voinjama, and Lofa County, and Voinjama Town, and Nimba County. And then I was in Guinea for almost three years, and I saw them have to flee Lofa County two times in the three years that I was there. So a woman that was my domestic worker at my house in Macenta, Guinea, she had been a refugee three times over, she had seen her house be destroyed twice. And sure, she came to me and said, “I’m shirtless again, I have nothing, and I still have my three children, thank God. But now what do I do?” And luckily, she was one of our first female guards that we were able to hire again in Guinea. And I think she settled in Guinea. It is difficult to go through that again and again. But the hope is in the choices that we can continue to offer them. I think that is what keeps us going, is that we still have things and opportunities that we can offer them so that they can continue to survive and actually go beyond survival.
JERRY FOWLER: And in both of those cases, many of those people have now been able to go home again.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Yes.
JERRY FOWLER: And there seems to be at least some extended period of peace and stability. Sierra Leone just had elections.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Their elections, yes. And they have predominately gone home. The 1,000,000 that were in Guinea, 99% are back in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and helping rebuild their country. So it is fascinating to watch that also.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the areas that you have spent a lot of your time on recently, and that IRC has been working on a lot, is the Democratic Republic of Congo. And I know you were there relatively recently. And I want to talk about that. But before we do, I wanted to ask you, the numbers of people who have perished in the Democratic Republic of Congo in now about the last nine or ten years, is in the millions.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Staggering.
JERRY FOWLER: And those numbers are generally derived from studies that the International Rescue Committee has done-- mortality studies. Can you explain, just in broad brushstrokes, what those numbers are and how IRC arrived at them?
SHANNON MEEHAN: The most recent study that was completed and the data is out, was in 2004. And based upon the calculations done by that study, close to 4,000,000 people had died since 1998 from easily preventable diseases, malaria, diarrhea, acute respiratory type diseases. And that data comes from our field medical teams with the Burnett Institute of Australia going out into teams and randomly choosing, I think it was more than 20,000 households, and doing an extensive interview based upon a mortality survey of their family members and death, and how and why and when. And then that data is all collected and then calculated, and then extrapolated into the numbers that we have. It is a very data, statistical analysis. And so we recently have done that exercise again in the Congo this last June and July, May, June, and July. And we hope to publish our findings in this coming year, ’07 and ’08 because that data’s extremely important to gauge where things are going in the Congo. We reported on four consistent mortality surveys, and the situation did keep getting worse. And despite that those figures are so staggering, those figures did help wake up the international community to respond to the health crisis and the shelter crisis, and the violence that was occurring, especially in Eastern Congo. So it is critical to have that scientific data that shows and measures how are we succeeding, or how are we failing, and where do we need to concentrate on helping Congo get back in a direction of progress and health and safety and security?
JERRY FOWLER: And just to clarify, we have talked about this a few times on the program. But people are dying of diseases, so they are not necessarily being killed directly, although there is some of that. But the reason they are dying of these diseases is because of the insecurity, that there are not clinics available to them.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Right.
JERRY FOWLER: Or they can not get to the clinics.
SHANNON MEEHAN: It is a lot about accessibility. And yes, if you had to-- when I traveled there, it is amazing what you have to—it is a car, and then you get in a pirogue, and then maybe you are on a motorcycle.
JERRY FOWLER: A pirogue is?
SHANNON MEEHAN: Is a canoe, a wooden canoe. And then you get on a motorcycle, and then you have to walk the last five kilometers to get to the village where there is a health center. So also imagine the surrounding villages, how many types of transportation do they need to take to get to the health center? So there is an infrastructure problem. But before, and still in Eastern Congo a lot of it was about the violence. If the violence is erupting in different areas, people will not move, or they will flee in other directions where we may not be able to access them, or there may not be healthcare workers there, where they are fleeing to. People need to go flee where they need to go. So yes, that has been a big part of it, and why the disease rate has multiplied.
JERRY FOWLER: So you were recently in Congo, I guess.
SHANNON MEEHAN: In January.
JERRY FOWLER: So, the beginning of the year. Not so recent, time flies. Tell me, what were the kinds of the highlights that you saw there?
SHANNON MEEHAN: I was fortunate to be able to travel from east to west, so I was able to go throughout the Eastern Kivu, South Kivu, Bukavu area, and Kisan.
JERRY FOWLER: That is all in the far east of Congo.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Far East of Congo. And then the midsection of Kisangani, the northern middle section of Congo, and then also Kinshasa. So I saw a wide breadth of the entire country. The highlights were how hopeful the population is now that they have had an election, President Kabila has been elected. It is now seven, eight months into his presidency. There still is a sense of hope. People are waiting for the direction, waiting for the movement toward applying the new constitution. And then they are getting themselves organized. They are maximizing the opportunities with the international funding. And the best program I witnessed was the community driven reconstruction, where a cluster of villages get together and they decide, by committee, what are the highest priorities that they want to address. And so each village nominates people, and on these committees, I saw a 16 year old and an 80 year old. And I saw men and women of different ages from different ethnic groups working together to maximize how they will they use the money, and what will they use the money for. And they chose the right things. It was all about maternal health; it was about kids’ education. It was about access to water, and building the infrastructure of water. So watching them make their decisions of how they are going to spend their development money and what their future is, with only the assistance from the International Rescue Committee was the financial part and then the advising on committee meetings--
JERRY FOWLER: Facilitating that.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Facilitating the discussions. But really, this one woman, she was leading the whole discussion, she was elected from one village. And they wrote down 40 priorities, and they reduced it down to the top two of what they could use their $20,000 for. It was just an amazing meeting to watch them all discuss, and everyone’s voice was very equal. The 16 year old versus the 80 year old, the woman versus the man, their voices were very equal on what was important to them. So it is nice to see them moving forward despite the fact that if you look at the Congo, how large it is, how wealthy it is, and yet it has very little infrastructure, not a lot of roads, it is tough terrain. But how the population is little by little taking on those obstacles, those monumental, and step by step achieving a lot of progress.
JERRY FOWLER: Now, one thing that you have been working on is trying to increase grass roots awareness in the United States about Congo. And you formed a coalition called Congo Global Action. Tell me about that.
SHANNON MEEHAN: That was actually founded at a request from our field office that basically said, given the statistics of how many people have died, how many women have been brutally violated and raped, and there are so many things that one could learn and care about in the Congo. Why is there no movement in the world that just focuses on the Congo, like we have for Darfur, like we have had in the past for South Africa? They are such an amazing population, fun, resilient, funny, and musical. And then there is a lot of potential there. It probably is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with the gold, diamonds, copper, gold tonic, etc. And so they said, “So Shannon, figure it out.” And I was like, “I’ll look into it.” So I just called around all the organizations, the operational agencies, the NGOs, like the International Rescue Committee, that do the lifesaving action in the Congo, and asked them about it. And they said, “Yeah, we have always wondered why there is not a movement.” And then that got the word out, and smaller entities across the United States and Europe started contacting us and saying, we care about the Congo too. And so we are trying to form a coalition of everyone that really cares about the Congo. And we are concentrating on what we felt were the three top priorities. Saving lives, keeping people safe from harm, so making sure that women no longer are raped and little girls are not violated as they grow their cabbage in their fields. And then the third was economic exploitation, to end economic exploitation. That the Congolese actually benefit fully from their riches and their wealth of everything that they have in their country. So we have unified ourselves, we have more than 30 members, and we have--
JERRY FOWLER: 30 member organizations?
SHANNON MEEHAN: 30 member organizations, from your tiny grass roots in Oregon to your operational local Congolese health agency in eastern Bukavu that is run by a Congolese group of people, to student groups in Brussels and throughout Europe, and a Congolese, Hands Up Congo grass roots movement in Australia. And people in Sri Lanka and Argentina that keep emailing, saying, “Yeah, I care about the Congo.” So we basically have some representation on every continent, and we are trying to coalesce everyone and unify them on these priorities, what we call our pillars of saving lives. Ending economic exploitation and keeping people safe so that we stay with the Congo in the long term. It is going to be along road of recovery and repair and healing, and we want to support the Congolese people in that process.
JERRY FOWLER: And if people want to find out more about Congo Global Action, there is a website I bet.
SHANNON MEEHAN: There is a website of that, which hopefully will be launched actually this week or early next week, which is www.congoglobalaction.org.
JERRY FOWLER: Congo Global Action, all one word.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Congo Global Action, all one word.
JERRY FOWLER: Dot org.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Dot org.
SHANNON MEEHAN: Or you can email us at drc.coalition@yahoo.com, and we send out an information package.
JERRY FOWLER: Shannon Meehan is the Director of Advocacy for the International Rescue Committee. Shannon, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
SHANNON MEEHAN: It was great to be here. Thanks for having me.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
