When Christopher Boian, a spokesperson at the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, says he is just a “normal kid from Colorado, nothing special at all,” he is being coy. With a 30-year-long career in journalism around the world, including stints as reporter at the International Herald Tribune, Deputy Director for Europe and Africa and Bureau Chief for Russia and CIS Countries at Agence France-Presse, Christopher is disarmingly genuine and surprisingly optimistic. With firsthand experience in the trenches and an aversion to sugar-coating, he spoke to The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative about transitioning from journalism to the humanitarian field, the journeys of modern-day refugees and ways to tell their stories, the work UNHCR does on the ground and what surprised him most about the people of Greece.

Interview by Anna Arutiunova

A.A.: You have very extensive experience in journalism. While working as a reporter, did you ever feel like getting involved and helping the people you were covering? 

C.B.: Of course. Journalism is a humanist profession, after all. It is important for journalists to be detached from their subjects – that disengagement is what can make reporting credible and impactful. But that said, there were plenty of times when I helped someone personally that I was also covering professionally. Just because they needed help immediately and I was there and able to give it. I don’t know what the calculus is for those moments, but you know it when you see it. It’s primal, instinctual. There is not the slightest contradiction in my mind between being able to be a good, objective, neutral, balanced reporter, on one hand, and doing the right thing as a human being when the time calls for it to help someone who is suffering and in immediate need on the other hand. Those occasions are rare, but they do happen.

A.A.: What brought you to the humanitarian field at this stage of your career? 

C.B.: In 30 years as a correspondent I spent a fair amount of time in the field covering various armed conflicts – in the Gulf, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Balkans – and seeing refugees at the moment they became refugees. In some instances I was also present to see the initial humanitarian emergency responses, from local civilians as well as NGOs and larger organizations like UNHCR. 

I always had a nagging curiosity about what would happen next to all those kids and mothers and grandpas after the initial run-for-your-life survival drama had passed and they began to face the reality of trying to recover their lives. 

After 30 years as a journalist, it felt like a very natural progression for me to learn more about the long-term human consequences of those terrible situations.

As a public information officer with UNHCR I still work very closely with my colleagues in the media around the world and I’m still very much involved in trying to make sure accurate, factual information gets reported. So my shift from workaday journalist covering all kinds of stories to media contact in an organization working specifically with refugees and others displaced by violence and persecution feels pretty seamless and logical to me. 

A.A.: This question is based on your recent Facebook post, which I found very powerful. If you had never left Washington, if you had never seen these camps with your own eyes, what would you not know? What critical information are we, the people who are not there, missing?

C.B.: What you get by being there, by meeting and seeing and talking with the women and children and men who have been forced to leave their homes to stay alive, is a better understanding of the link between the theory and the practice of helping those who need help. We all see plenty of information every day in the media about refugees – lots of numbers, data, abstractions and polemics. And mass media by their nature have a way of generalizing and oversimplifying. Even when we see footage and sound bites of an individual, these are often used to represent a type, a trend, a category of people. There is some fine reporting out there on refugees, for sure. But when it comes to really learning about the human stakes – not just for refugees themselves, but for all people – in how we respond to the needs of forcibly displaced people, nothing is quite as instructive as actually being there with those people. There is an essential human bond there and you are reminded that the grandmother sitting in front of you, her gestures, her values, the train of thought that drives her conversation, is fundamentally much like your own grandmother. 

Seeing things with your own eyes really helps you connect principles with practical action. 

I am still learning a lot about all the pieces needed to translate the general will to help into practical, sustainable assistance for large numbers of people. 

A.A.: There are all these official terms, like “displaced people,” “refugees,” “asylum seekers” and all these numbers and statistics, and I understand why that’s there – there has to be a formal language for government bodies to talk about this. But it was mostly the tone of your Facebook post that was so personal, it really stood out. Do you think we may need a new language and a new approach to telling these stories to millennials, to generation Z on Snapchat and Facebook? 

C.B.: Yes, the language used to talk about refugees can get pretty confusing sometimes. There is a lot of technical legal jargon and it is fully understood only by a relatively narrow band of specialists – lawyers, policymakers, humanitarian experts, etc. – who work full time on refugee issues. The international response to refugees is by its nature a complex and often highly technical undertaking. And so the language that accompanies this response if very much the same, a reflection of that complexity. 

That language however is often not particularly useful when it comes to talking about refugees with the general public. So yes, I do think it is important to find the words and the ways of telling stories that help distill all of the technicalities into the essential ideas that all of us understand easily. 

I think the most important thing, especially for people involved in public communication about refugees, is to aim to tell the truth and tell it simply. To cut through all of the noise and distraction and simply call things by their real names. 

Because at the core of all the public discussion about refugees there are some very simple, basic truths that all human beings know and understand. Truths we understand not with our heads or even our hearts, but in the pit of our stomachs. 

A.A.: How does UNHCR, a 9,000-strong organization, know when to get involved? Who actually says: “OK, we’re going in?”

C.B.: UNHCR was founded after World War II to deal with the world refugee problem at the time. Today it is the only international organization mandated by the UN General Assembly – meaning practically all the countries of the world – to lead and coordinate the international response to refugee situations. It’s important for everyone to understand that the UN Refugee Agency does not work in any country where our assistance has not been requested by the government. And we do not have the authority to compel any country to take any action to help refugees that the government of that country does not want to take. Decisions on whether and how to help refugees are first and foremost made by national governments themselves. We merely advise and support governments in implementing decisions that they alone have decided to make. And we do this only at their request.

A.A.: Can you walk me through a hypothetical journey of a refugee, say, from Syria? Starting from the moment where I leave my house in Aleppo. What happens to me next?

C.B.: These scenarios depend on a wide range of factors including geography, weather, economic means, health and constantly fluctuating policies and operational realities on borders. This is the case today with Syria, just as it is with any other country. Some people flee by travelling abroad as a tourist or on a business trip or to study and then seek protection because of life-threatening violence at home. Others leave their homes to stay, sometimes with friends or relatives, in a safer part of their own country or in a country close to home. And still others leave by car, bus, train or plane to get to a safe place. 

The world by now is very familiar with the stories of people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries who have made it to Turkey, for example, or Egypt, and have then paid smugglers in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean and get to Greece and Italy to seek asylum. Around two million Syrian refugees today live in Turkey, nearly all of them in some form of urban accommodations – not in tented camps. These are people who, whether travelling by car, bus, plane or on foot, managed to reach the Turkish border, enter the country and register as refugees. Accommodations have been provided for them in a variety of places. Many other Syrians crossed into Lebanon and now live there waiting for when it will be safe to return home. Jordan is also hosting many hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. In Jordan, many do live in sprawling tent refugee camps, although there too most live in urban accommodations of various sorts that have been provided for them. 

Whether the UN Refugee Agency leads the operation to register new refugees, as in the case of Jordan, or supports the government that leads that operation, as in the case of Turkey, our first order of business is to establish identity. This starts with an initial hearing, a chance for each individual to have his or her story heard. Any supporting identification documents are collected and verified, new refugee identification documents are issued and stories are checked and cross-checked. Refugees are often forced to flee in great haste and sometimes have to flee without basic documents such as birth certificates, passports, etc. 

A.A.: In the case of Syria, is there anyone even left there to provide these documents?

C.B.: There are many ways to begin the process of documenting identities anew, including interviews, cross-checking stories and keeping track of people over months and even years after they register as refugees. Stories are verified and re-verified using information from a variety of sources including our own personnel and partners in the field, other refugees from the same locations, etc. In the case of Syrian refugees, identifying biometric data including iris scans and fingerprints are also collected from the start and serve as a benchmark for checking identities for a variety of purposes including food and aid distribution in the future. Sooner or later, the stories do come together.

Over the course of time, we continue verifying identities as we also look for durable solutions for refugees to help them get their lives back on track. There are three main solutions for the longer term that we look at. The first one, and the one that is the first choice of virtually all refugees, is to return to their homes when it is safe to do so. The first place refugees go when fleeing violence is to a neighboring village. They try to stay close to home and hope that they will be able to get back to their lives, homes, possessions, friends and neighborhood. 

Refugees don’t become refugees right away; they first become internally displaced persons. There are twice as many IDPs in the world as there are refugees. 

A second longer-term solution is eventual integration into the host country. The problem is that the average time for refugees in the world to be refugees is about 17 years. In a lot of countries, refugees are not legally allowed to work. So they may live in camps or urban accommodations where they can get some help from the host state, NGOs and international organizations. They may spend many months and years doing their best to eke out a living in that kind of twilight zone. Indeed, some refugee camps have existed for generations now and have developed their own micro-economies within the camps themselves. 

The third solution, which only 0.6% of all refugees have ever had a chance to benefit from, is relocation to a third country, or “resettlement” as it is termed. A very tiny fraction of refugees, not even one percent, ever gets resettled in another country, something like one in every 500 people. Those who are resettled go through a lengthy, stringent, deliberate and orderly process that in many cases starts with UNHCR in the field. We identify the most vulnerable individuals within already very vulnerable populations – people for whom no other solution is going to work. In close consultation with the host government and partner organizations in the field, we put together a list of viable candidates for resettlement to the countries that accept refugees (the United States is one of the about 36 countries that actually accept refugees for resettlement, but not all countries do). Recommendations about which country would work best for the resettlement of any given individual or family based on background, language, whether they have family connections, whether there’s already a related community there, etc. are then made. This process ends for UNHCR when we submit our referral lists to the governments of these countries. At that point, full responsibility for the resettlement process – whether to accept people, who to accept, when to accept them and where to accommodate them – is taken over by the national governments of those resettlement countries. Resettlement happens only with affirmative decisions by those governments themselves. 

In the United States, the government takes over the screening process, the vetting process, the security checks. On average, this process takes about 18 to 24 months. But it can take longer and involves an extremely stringent background checks, medical checks, psychological checks, biodata collection, biometrical data collection, biographical fact checking. The Department of Homeland Security and a number of government agencies manage this process. 

There is no population more thoroughly scrutinized and vetted for entry in the United States than Syrian refugees. None. 

So in terms of security, it’s very important to stress that these people have been vetted in the extreme and that U.S. officials have determined that they present no threat to U.S. security.

A.A.: With regard to host countries and their concerns, how do we make sure they don’t crumble under the additional strain put on by refugees? 

C.B.: That’s a very good question. There’s no formula written in stone for how this happens. Look at the situation in Lebanon today: about one in four people living in Lebanon today in a Syrian refugee. The numbers are huge, especially as an expression of the country’s total population. And it’s important to work with the authorities and partners to find the right balance and to ensure that the refugees, desperate as their needs are, are not perceived by local people to be somehow getting better treatment than the disadvantaged people that are citizens of the country.

Turkey is now shouldering a huge part of the burden of Syrian refugees, over two million people. Jordan has a huge number of refugees. The countries that are hosting these refugees require major international financial support and logistical expertise to alleviate the strain that they’re under.

If the world proves incapable of stepping up to support the neighboring refugee host countries near Syria, what’s going to happen is more people saying: “I’m going to put my children and my spouse on an unseaworthy raft at night, pay a shady smuggler and take our chances on surviving and trying to make it to Europe.” You have to ask yourself how desperate these families must be even to consider that kind of life-threatening option. Unfortunately, some of them look at the situations they would face as new refugees in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon and conclude: “That’s not a life for me. I’d rather risk my children’s lives to get somewhere else.” So it is imperative that the world support the countries hosting the majority of Syrian refugees so that they know there is a place to be safe and build a life until something changes in the home country.

Human beings have always been on the move escaping conflict, wars, persecution. 

If you’re not going to help them stay as close as possible to their homes, as most say they would prefer to do, then you have to be prepared to help them more when they arrive where you live. 

Like all of us, they are human beings made of dreams and desires and ambitions and love of life. They want to survive and they are going to survive. UNHCR does not believe that building barricades and walls, or enacting exclusionary laws, is the right answer to the situation. Just as all people need oxygen, food and water to live, every person also needs hope of being able to live a life with a little dignity. No more, no less. Every person has got a right to that. 

A.A.: What are the biggest challenges UNCHR is facing at this point?

C.B.: I’d say there are really two big challenges at the moment and they are related. One is our perennial problem – adequate funding. And the other is sufficient awareness of the nature and scope of the refugee situation in the world today. These two challenges have a symbiotic relationship. Systematically, year after year, UNHCR funding appeals are met to a level of around 40 percent of what we know we need. Public donations, even small ones, do make a very positive difference. But the biggest source of funding for the UN system in general and for our agency in particular still comes from states. Obviously the better people – whether the general public or government policymakers – understand the humanitarian and security dimensions of the problem, the more inclined they will be to do what is necessary, including allocation of funds, to address is effectively.

A.A.: What kinds of risks are UNHCR personnel on the ground dealing with? 

C.B.: Staff of UNHCR and other organizations working with refugees today face a variety of risks including threats to their physical well-being. That is why the agency makes the security of its staff in the field the top priority. I saw this myself in May while on mission in Greece. Tensions inside a facility on one of the islands were constantly at the boiling point. The camp, which had become essentially a detention center, was overcrowded with desperate people from a number of different countries – Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, etc. There were frequent eruptions of serious violence that resulted in injuries, I think some fatalities and that only ratcheted tensions up further. My UNHCR colleagues had a very serious and risky job assisting the very vulnerable people in that camp in those circumstances. UNHCR has staff working around the world in situations that present all kinds of risk, in large part just because of the nature of the conflicts and violence that produce refugees in the first place. They are well trained in how to minimize these risks. But they can’t ever be eliminated entirely.

A.A.: In that same Facebook post you talk about the people of Greece. What surprised you the most about them?

C.B.: The whole world knows that Greece has been under tremendous economic pressure in the last couple of years, on the verge of bankruptcy, Grexit, new government elections, violence in the streets. Greece is under huge financial pressure from international lenders and from the world community to get their economic house in order, and specifically to roll back hiring in the public sector, to raise taxes, to continue to slash pensions for old people who worked their whole lives and are now getting like 400 euros a month. And as I remarked in that post, of all the peoples in the world who would have a reason to close their doors to refugees it would be the people of Greece.

And yet the response I saw from the Greek people in general – in Athens, in the islands, in the north of the mainland – was exactly the opposite of that. On the contrary, the people of Greece showed such genuine human generosity and magnanimity of spirit. Faced with this emergency, they would just open their own houses, get their own food, come out and give it to the desperate families arriving on their land. I deeply admire the way the people of Greece reacted to the flows of refugees into their country last year and this year. To me, this was a model of how people should be.

A.A.: What’s the most frequent type of criticism that UNHCR gets, on whose behalf and how do you deal with it?

C.B.: Efforts by everyone at UNHCR and at all humanitarian organizations always fall somewhere in the vicinity of "not enough" and "better than nothing." 

I would say the most frequent criticisms we get are that we are too bureaucratic, too caught up in process and occasionally incompetent. 

I have heard that criticism of UNHCR in Greece and elsewhere. All I can say is that the task for UNHCR – including coordination of the many actors involved in the refugee response – is extraordinarily complex and very unique. We try to bring about solutions that involve many moving parts and that will impact large numbers of people in dire straits. Mistakes may be made along the way. And the constraints UNHCR faces, because of our obligation to remain neutral and to support the governments that request our help, in responding to the many criticisms that come our way make it difficult for the organization to “fight back”. At the core of it all, however, is genuine goodwill and very high competence.

A.A.: That puts you in a really vulnerable position. You have all the responsibility and none of the power.  

C.B.: Of course. UNHCR is everybody’s punching bag. But when the cameras are gone, the lights go off and the time comes to translate all the words into actual deeds, governments often say: “OK, UNHCR. Make this happen.” So we try to do it, working closely with UN agencies, international humanitarian organizations, local partners, NGOs, volunteers, etc. Who’s going to do what: who supplies the water, who’s going to deliver the non-food items, who’s going to build the shelters. If anything goes wrong, we’ll be the ones to blame because we coordinate and do many of these things. It is hard for everything to work like a Swiss watch in these situations. But though UNHCR does face criticism, the results that are delivered by the work of the people in this organization is also I think acknowledged as valuable and worthy. So we also receive every days expressions of recognition and gratitude – from governments, from NGOs and especially from refugees themselves – for the work UNHCR does.

A.A.: You can’t predict future wars and conflicts, but do you think the refugee problem is going to get worse, or better?

C.B.: Better. I’m basing it on my own gut, because I know that my colleagues here are so good at what they do, we’re not just banging our heads against the wall. The messages are going to get through, sooner or later. Things may get worse before they get better, it’s true. But the understanding is going to come. I wouldn’t be able to do this job if I didn’t believe it was going to get better. I believe it must get better and it will get better. I don’t know when, but that’s why every day all of us who work for this organization show up. 

As grim as it appears, there are solutions and these crises are manageable. 

I feel very optimistic about the future. I don’t see the world tanking as we are all told every day that it is. A lot of things are in flux these days – the global status quo, the institutions we’ve relied on for generations, all of the systems we have are being questioned and reevaluated. This is a little disorienting for everyone, that’s true. But I don’t think it is de facto a bad thing. It doesn’t lead down a dark and miserable path. In the big shake-up that is happening, what is good and still useful will be retained and what is outdated and no longer relevant will be jettisoned. I may be naïve, but I do believe that in the end the truth and the good should prevail and do prevail.