Lessons From The Thai-Kampuchea Border Emergency Operation

Ulf Kristoffersson

In October 1979, when Michael Irwin, the UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh told me that he had been asked to send me on assignment to the border between Cambodia and Thailand, I was less than enthusiastic. I had just completed five years of service in Laos and Cambodia, each time leaving what seemed like minutes before hostile forces took over the capital cities. I now had two daughters – one only a month old – and was settling in Bangladesh. Alas, although Michael did his best to say I was indispensable to the Dhaka team, Henry Labouisse had different plans. He had been asked by the Secretary General to work with the International Committee of the Red Cross at the border and I had previous experience in Cambodia. So off I went.

What followed were among the most challenging, demanding and tumultuous years of my career. When I think back on how those years reflect what UNICEF was at that time – and how we approached humanitarian operations in those early days – I realise that it doesn’t seem new or revolutionary in the light of all that has happened since. But in the late 1970s, it was all new territory. So here are some of the lessons I learned about UNICEF and humanitarian operations:

Emergencies require action at scale. When I was left at the border in Aranyaprathet, we had no idea what would happen next. It was a small town, with nothing much going on. To be honest, that’s why I was left on my own to manage the operation. About a week after I got there, the first hundred refugees stumbled across the border and, in collaboration with local Thai authorities, we provided food and shelter. Within days that trickle of families turned into a river of humanity, far exceeding our human and material capacity to respond. Six months later, over a half a million people were in our care.

People make all the difference. Henry Labouisse had agreed to co-lead a major operation that other, one could argue more experienced agencies, wouldn’t touch. At that stage we didn’t have what is now known as “surge” capacity and many senior people either weren’t available…or weren’t interested. So Labouise put out a call for volunteers and UNICEF staff from across the globe responded. Young, determined colleagues from headquarters – from admin assistants to secretaries to drivers – arrived ready for action. They worked around the clock, accepting all sorts of hardship and risk, to get the job done.

Saving lives is political. The border operation generated enormous controversy inside UNICEF, within the UN system and beyond. Among the vulnerable, famished refugees that sought protection in our camps were former Khmer Rouge combatants, the very soldiers that had massacred thousands just a few years before. It was impossible to separate these people from the thousands of innocent civilians. The border operation involved a level of ambiguity and compromise we had not faced before. Hard, life-and-death decisions were made every day. Deals were struck with unsavory characters. We saved lives by thinking out of the box and taking chances, not by watching our backs.

Trust people on the front line. My time at the border spanned the tenures of both Henry Labouisse and James Grant. As most of us know, they were very different people, with very different temperaments, leadership styles and points of view. But they shared one essential perspective: with responsibility must come authority and trust. I was a relatively junior officer thrown in the deep end of what ended up being the largest humanitarian operation UNICEF had ever undertaken. There were many in the UN system that tried to second guess the decisions the team and I made; they seemed more intent on assigning blame than providing support. But not Labouisse or Grant. The first time Labouisse visited the border he left behind the Regional Director’s car to ease our transport problems; Jim Grant stood firm as political controversy clouded our every move.

Of course the operation was political, as all situations of this kind are. Nonetheless, it saved tens of thousands of lives and played a significant role in restoring the livelihoods of the people whose lives it saved. The cross-border operation included tons of food, seeds, fertilizers, fishing nets and other essential supplies for the returning refugees.

Let’s be clear, UNICEF and its partners did this – under the able and courageous leadership of Henry Labouisse and James Grant.

Ulf Kristoffersson is the Author of Blue Grit: A Life on Humanitarian Front Lines of the United Nations (Available on Amazon)

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