Do what is right or go by the book?
Like a paradox, my career of UNICEF (23 years) will have ended just the way it started, in humanitarian emergencies. In October 1993, Burundi was in chaos, after the assassination of the democratically elected Hutu president, carried out by Tutsi soldiers. This led to a deadly civil war. There were tens of thousands of victims, mostly of Hutu origin, a sad omen that would portend the horrific genocide of Rwandan Tutsis the following year. During the last years of my UNICEF career in EMOPS, New York, I visited several countries facing civil war emergencies.
As I reflect on these experiences, it is clear to me that UNICEF’s support on the ground in the 90s was very different from those of the 2010s. There is no comparison to be made. There is no nostalgia for the past; it is simply that the political and social contexts of these bygone times have perfectly contributed to initiatives which would appear to us today to be perfectly incongruous. As proof of this, three anecdotes are clearly etched in my mind during October-November 1993, the period of the civil war in Burundi.
When war broke out, the borders were closed for several days, curfews were imposed, and foreigners were prohibited from moving outside the protected areas of the capital, Bujumbura. During this time of macabre silence, a team of Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium, clandestinely arrived in our office from neighboring Zaire. They asked me for medical equipment, and without any formal procedures, our Health team handed medical supplies from our stocks, that were intended for the Ministry of Health. The MOH was no longer functioning. Subsequently, we were thanked for doing this!
Motivated by resolute humanitarian emergency workers who were helping victims on the ground, an Italian doctor and nurse from our team expressed an urgent desire for concrete action. A pretext was quickly found. We had measles vaccines in stock. Our two medical colleagues grabbed them and asked me to take them to the field, in the north of the country, to deliver these vaccines to the local health authorities. Alas, all the health centers and hospitals were abandoned, the staff hidden or missing. So for several days the UNICEF Burundi "program coordinator" that I was, prepared syringes for the team nurse which allowed many children to be vaccinated!
A few days later, we were staying at a bishopric in a town in the north of the country, when a panic-stricken doctor from our team came to see me. He had learned from the priests who were hosting us that ethnic Tutsi nuns, in a very small village not far from our location, were facing serious death threats from the surrounding Hutu population. Without asking for permission, or barely, the UNICEF all-terrain vehicle was mobilized to locate these nuns and put them in a safe place! We were a long way from our mandate then, right? But what could I say against such an initiative? Let us not forget, it was 1993, at the time. The population of these countries had great respect for "whites" (musungu in the Kirundi language). It was not until many years later that security concerns for humanitarian workers arose.
Of course, during this period, the UNICEF team contributed, along with other UN agencies, bilateral and multilateral partners, to the re-establishment of health services, when the civil war stopped. But I still believe that these "small'' concrete gestures were a stimulus for my colleagues, in their subsequent activities.
A few months later, towards the end of 1994, Jim Grant spent a few days in Burundi. It was a great moment, and the question he asked me, in all simplicity: "Pierre, what about Hutus and Tutsis in your office?”. I reassured him, our office was a little haven at the time, but Jim had so well grasped the crux of the tragedy of this region of the Great Lakes.
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