McGoldrick, a lecturer, author, and expert in international law, the Middle East peace process, and humanitarian aid, previously held the position of deputy special coordinator, resident coordinator, and humanitarian coordinator in UNSCO, from 2018 to 2020, when he was replaced by Lynn Hastings.

Hastings stepped down in early December, and McGoldrick was asked to oversee relief efforts in Gaza and the West Bank until a permanent replacement can be found.

McGoldrick said that previous experience gives him a good sense of who he’ll have to work with to successfully deliver aid to the region. The Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, and the resulting war that has raged in Gaza since then, has radically changed the reality on the ground, but the major players are in many ways the same, he noted.

“It will be a challenge taking on a job like this, but I know the context, and I think I can work in that context, especially with the national and international staff in place,” he said.

“I believe that if there’s goodwill with all the people that you work with, then you can optimize what you’re trying to do. And I hope to work with all the different constituencies to try and get them to be receptive towards the humanitarian endeavor.”

A Focus on Current Needs

McGoldrick said he’s focused on getting aid to the residents of Gaza as soon as possible. A U.N. report issued on Dec. 21 laid out how dire the stakes currently are there, noting that half of residents there are on the verge of starvation.

“When you get a crisis or a disaster of this kind, you have to plan for prioritization and quick expansive response in order to try and save lives and protect people,” he said.

In April 2020, McGoldrick reflected on the challenges of working in the region, in the fifth installment of the Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series. At the time, he noted how excruciatingly difficult it is to separate politics from relief work in the region, but how it’s absolutely paramount. That’s still true today.

“No matter what happens at the end of this conflict, there will be community structures, groups and leaders, and authorities who will want to work with the people,” he said.

“We just have to try and find out how we can locate those and use them to try and mobilize.”

Sharing Insights with Students

As an instructor in the IIHA’s International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance program, McGoldrick will share his insights with students at Fordham when he finishes his current assignment. He currently does so via the podcast Humanitarian Fault Lines.

“There’s a lot of theory and policy that people should understand, but I think people learn more from case studies and stories,” he said.

“If you tell somebody a story about an individual who was in a crisis or a conflict, and how their life was affected, and then changed and improved, people remember that more.”

Ultimately, he said, a humanitarian aid worker is only successful if a level of trust exists among people on all sides of a conflict.

“That is where it makes a difference because somebody might not agree with what you do immediately, but you can get them to understand why you’re doing it,” he said.

“I think that’s the approach that you have to adopt. Otherwise, it’s just sides rubbing against each other, and that doesn’t help anyone.”

One of the people those refugees are encountering as they cross into Moldova, a tiny neighbor to the west, is Joseph Lowry. Lowry, a native of Dublin who lives in Vienna, Austria, is a senior communications/media officer and spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is overseen by the United Nations. In 2004, he earned an International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance (IDHA) from the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

Heading to the Ukraine Border

Lowry left Vienna on March 3 and arrived three days later at Moldova’s Palanca border crossing, near the Ukrainian port city of Odesa. He only had a brief chance to observe the scene there before he tested positive for COVID-19 and had to isolate in a hotel in the capital of Chișinău. But the visit still made clear the gravity of the situation.

“It so impossibly gargantuan, it’s hard to wrap your head around,” he said in a phone interview on March 8. Over 275,000 people had crossed this border at that point, he said. Some were arriving in packed S.U.V.’s; others only had that they could carry in suitcases. What was most heartbreaking was watching men say goodbye to their wives, mothers, sisters, and children.

“The men were turning around and walking back towards Ukraine with their shoulders up. Many of them were going back to fight, and they were proud, their chests were out. They were defiant, but obviously, they were heartbroken as well,” he said.

“The kids, you could see, didn’t realize what was happening, that daddy wasn’t going [into Moldova]yet, but they were. As a father, that for me was something I could identify with.”

Most of the refugees are passing through Moldova on their way to Romania and other European countries to the west, but they need a place to recharge, and in Chișinău, that has meant opening the Moldexpo, a small exhibition center that has served for the past two years as a COVID-19 treatment center. On March 8, it was housing 1,000 people, nearly double its intended capacity.

Telling the Story on the Ground

For Lowry and a small staff that traveled to Chișinău from Vienna, the job is to tell the story of not only the refugees through his Twitter account and his blog, but of the staff based in Moldova, who are supervising tasks like the procuring of scanners that can quickly read the documents of people waiting to cross the border.

In some ways, this humanitarian crisis is familiar to Lowry, who has been working in the field since 1993 and has been dispatched after natural disasters to places such as Myanmar and Somalia. At the same time, the magnitude here is much worse, he said.

Working in the media, for instance, he said he’s accustomed to a weeklong window after an emergency where the media lets them tell their story before questions about supply bottlenecks become sharper. But he doesn’t expect that now.

“My sense is that won’t happen this time because this is just unlike anything else. The media can see from where they are that it’s not going to be easy to get humanitarian aid to where it needs to get to because there’s still a war going on,” he said.

When it comes to helping, Lowry said that it’s natural that people might want to donate goods, but the answer, he said, is cash, cash, and more cash.

“We can buy in bulk locally, so we’re supporting the local market. We can get stuff across borders because we have arrangements with the border authorities. We can move things into where they’re needed,” he said.

The Most Difficult Challenge

Larry Hollingworth, the director of the IDHA, said the trainings, which have taken place for 20 years at Fordham, as well as in Africa, Asia, the Far East, and Latin America, are inexorably intertwined with day-to-day operations such as Lowry’s. While every call to action differs by the cause of the crisis, access, climate, geography, the physical and mental state of the population, and resources available, he said war is the most difficult challenge.

“Humanitarian aid workers pride themselves on a response which is neutral, impartial, and independent. We try not to take sides. In many crises, this is very hard, because there is an oppressor and an oppressed. Such is the case in Ukraine today. We have resources, we have the expertise, we have the humanitarian imperative to respond, but we have very limited access,” he said, noting this the war has quickly morphed from a regional crisis to a global one.

“There is so much more we could do if the population had egress. This is a cruel barbaric war that it is a dark stain on the Russian nation. They are deceived by the propaganda and lies of a small group of their leaders.”

Hollingworth suggested that we should prepare for the long haul, as history and experience tell us that the forced migrations of the millions of people from Ukraine will lead to protracted crises, and it may be decades before all who left return.

“We must also never forget that this is but one crisis. Its location has projected it to the front stage,” he said.

“The humanitarian community is facing huge challenges in many other parts of the world where the media coverage and the resource’s response is at best minimal.”

Lowry, meanwhile, is hoping to rejoin his team soon. He will return to Vienna for a break but will likely be back again. His second daughter was born in Kyiv, and he still has friends who live there.

“The thought of Kyiv being reduced to rubble, it’s as heart-wrenching as if it were happening to Dublin,” he said.

The Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, which was founded in 2001, is a university-wide center that reports directly to Fordham’s Office of the President. It serves as a bridge between academia and humanitarian efforts by hosting training courses, publishing reports on a wide range of humanitarian topics, and hosting events that create an increased understanding of global humanitarian crises.

On June 11, McGoldrick, a resident of Scotland who also served as United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, was made Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George.

He said he considered himself to be extremely fortunate to have worked in the international humanitarian and development sector for nearly three decades, for the United Nations, the Red Cross, and Save the Children. He felt honored to receive the award.

“Yet the real recognition goes to all the inspiring and humbling people with whom I have worked over the years, in particular national staff members, in both U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations, in armed conflicts and disasters in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. This award is a testament to their hard work and dedication, often in the most challenging of circumstances. The award as much for them as it is for me,” he said.

In his new role as an institute fellow, McGoldrick shares the insights and lessons that he has accrued from thirty years of working in the field of humanitarian aid with the next generation of aid workers.

He has also been an instructor at the institute’s International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance for the past two decades.

In April 2020, he delivered a preview of his new role, during the fifth installment of the IIHA’s Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series. He dedicated the lecture to addressing the operational challenges of interacting with non-state actors and de facto authorities, specifically Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

“The two main challenges [to humanitarian assistance]are a more political grip on humanitarian funding and humanitarian access,” he said.

“Reductions in funding globally are occurring as humanitarian needs grow and are linked increasingly to humanitarian assistance choices based on political considerations and impacted by a growing world disorder. The other biggest obstacle facing humanitarians is access.”

McGoldrick’s involvement in humanitarian affairs began in 1991 when he visited Sierra Leone as part of a delegation from Save The Children, and he would go on to visit countries such as Pakistan, Lebanon, Georgia, and Nepal, to help distribute aid to victims of war and natural disasters.

The work would not have been possible without the support and understanding of his family, he said.

“They stood by me throughout various crises, including from a distance when we had to live apart for long periods of time. A big thank you to them.”

For Mariela Breton, FCRH ’21, graduation day was more than just the culmination of her accomplishments at Fordham. 

“I’m first-generation so it means a lot to me,” she said. “I’m looking forward to getting a better job, financially supporting my family.”

Breton, a psychology and Spanish studies double major, said that her favorite class was multicultural psychology, which examines psychology through cultural and sociohistorical perspectives.

Camaraderie, teamwork, and friendship were the things that helped graduating Fordham College of Rose Hill students Charlie White, Nick Ulto, Tom Hurst, and Joey Randazzo get through the last 14 months. The men, who were all a part of Fordham’s rugby team, said that it was good to know they had support. 

“It was pretty challenging, but we all have each other,” White said. “We all rallied around each other as a group of guys playing a sport, so we really all had each other’s back.”

White said that this was a theme for the team, even before the pandemic.

“We would always go out on the weekend and try to plan social events and we were just trying to include everyone; that’s the best part about [rugby],” he said.

During his first year on campus, James Langan, FCRH ’21, started an intramural soccer team.

“A couple of kids in my dorm, kids in my classes, kids I met in the cafeteria—it was a good way to connect those first few weeks,” he said.

Some of those friendships and connections from that team lasted all four years, including one with Saige Mitchell, also FCRH ’21.

For Mitchell and Langan, reuniting on the Rose Hill campus for their diploma ceremony was the first time they had seen each other and their friends in person in over a year.

“I’m really grateful that we’re able to be here, said Mitchell, who’d been taking all of her classes virtually.  

Both said that their classes at Fordham helped prepare them for the future.

Mitchell, who will be starting medical school at Duke University, said that her biochemistry class had the most impact.

“I’m a biology major and I took it through the chemistry department. I met a really great mentor, and I’ve been doing research with her for about a year and a half,” she said.

For Langan, who is applying to graduate school, his upper-level numerical analysis class encouraged him to study math in depth.

“It was fascinating to learn what was out there beyond the normal level of math that I’ve learned my whole life,” he said.

Being back on the Keating steps reminded Lucianne Magnibas, FCRH ’21, of her favorite Fordham memory: the annual candle-lighting ceremony for first-year students.

“As an orientation leader, I got to experience that over and over again and it’s always really touching,” she said. 

Magnibas, a commuter student who majored in international political economy, said that she was grateful to be back on campus after the last year. 

“These past couple of weeks, being on campus and then of course graduating on Keating brings me back to why I love it here so much,” she said. 

Her father, Edwin Maginbas said he was so proud of all his daughter has done so far. 

“She’s accomplished a great deal here,” he said. “We’re so happy with the University and the school. She has a great school spirit and participates even as a commuter she’s very involved. We’re just ecstatic, very proud parents.”   

Jade Kennedy Chrichlow, FCRH ’21, was an African and African American Studies major and peace and justice minor. She’ll be starting Fordham Law in the fall. 

“My intro to Peace and Justice class with Professor Garnet Kindervater was really amazing. I used that class for my personal essays for law school, and it really just transformed how I thought about peace and justice because what’s justice for one person may not be justice for another person,” said Chrichlow, who was a transfer student to Fordham.  “I find that even in my thesis I cited things from that class. I constantly see myself going back to that class and telling everyone about it.”  

Alyssa Grimando, GABELLI ’21, came from East Northport, New York, to pursue a global business degree on the Lincoln Center campus, with a minor in sustainable business. She’ll soon be starting a job with Bank of America. Her favorite Fordham memory is studying abroad at Fordham London. Graduating in person was a special day for her, she said. 

“It’s been a long time coming, and a lot of hard work, and I’m glad we’re being recognized for it.”

Tyler Raciti, FCRH ’21, said graduation is “a special moment” for him. When I came to Fordham, it was in the backdrop of my father passing away. Being here, I feel like he’s with me.”

Raciti was instrumental in organizing Fordham’s Lavender Graduation for LGBTQ students.

“I’m so happy that Fordham was really embracing diversity and inclusion,” he said, citing that ceremony and other Diversity Graduation Celebrations.

He was also the founding editor of the Fordham Undergraduate Law Review. “Great minds,” he said of his fellow students. “I’m going to miss them.”

Shaniqua Orr, GSS ’21, said she had to push herself to finish her Master’s in Social Work, and that it’s because of her faith that she did. “I was raised in foster care, but I maintained my relationship with my mom and dad, who both passed away this past year,” said Orr, who served as student speaker at the Graduate School of Social Service’s virtual ceremony. “I feel like I can identify with my patients because I’m able to tap into their feelings. Social work is not for the faint of heart. It’s all about delivery: What you say and how you say it. Like my mom used to say, ‘You can get more bees with honey than vinegar.’ But it’s mostly about being transparent and leaving your opinions outside the door.”

Ray Mitchell, GSAS ’21, was no stranger to Fordham when he set foot on the Rose Hill campus in 2017. The Edmonton, Canada, native spent a month at the University in 2016 when he earned an international diploma in humanitarian assistance from Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

He was so impressed, he signed on to earn a master of arts in international humanitarian action, which is jointly offered with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. On Saturday, Mitchell, who currently works for a company contracted by NATO to supervise the removal of landmines in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Ukraine, and Kosovo, was one 136 students to receive their diplomas at a virtual ceremony following the University’s main commencement.

He said he was humbled to work with IIHA faculty such as humanitarian programs director Larry Hollingsworth, and senior fellow Anthony Land. He wrote his master’s thesis about private medical support for humanitarian missions and said he’ll apply the lessons he learned to his current work.

“The way that I do operational planning and the way that I do strategic management has forever changed because of this program. I’ll focus on sustainability and localization at the national level from the very start of mission planning,” he said.

— Reporting by Kelly Kultys, Adam Kaufman, Sierra McCleary-Harris, and Patrick Verel

The ceremony, held on June 28 at the Lincoln Center campus, honored the 54th graduating class of Fordham’s International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance (IDHA), an intensive four-week training program geared toward mid-career professionals in the humanitarian aid sector.

In addition to 22 IDHA graduates, two graduates of the Master of Arts in International Humanitarian Action program, a joint degree offered by the International Institute of Humanitarian Affairs and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, were lauded.

On his last day as Fordham’s vice president for administration, Thomas A. Dunne was also honored for his ongoing work with Fordham Law Schools’ Dilly Pro Bono Project, which assists immigrants seeking asylum at the southern border.

In his address, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, made a point of telling graduates that he schedules his annual year-end retreat so he can attend the ceremony.

“You are built very different. You respond not so much to things and situations as to people. You champion the human dignity of those who live at the edge of human society and the shadowy places of the world,” he said.

“You should really be hailed as masters of compassion, doctors of the human form. That is who you aspire to be, and to become ever more fully, as you begin your professional careers in the field. The field is those parts of the world where human dignity is affronted, and the human heart is tested.”

The graduates hailed from 14 countries, including Sudan, Germany, Australia, and Myanmar. They followed the 53rd IDHA class, whose courses took place in Geneva in October and November.

A Tight Camaraderie Forged

Oscar Lindow, a native of Jordan and programme officer at the World Food Programme, delivered the IDHA student address. He marveled at the friendships that he and his fellow graduates quickly established.

“Months ago, most of us had never met. We then confined ourselves to one building, and we’ve been living together, eating together, studying together. We’ve faced problems together; we’ve solved problems together. … That ties people together,” he said.

“We’ve helped each other and looked after each other. As much as I appreciated some great lectures on children in armed conflict and humanitarian principles, I would also take away with me those ties that were created with people.”

Fadiya Al-Shmailawi Mahadi, a classmate and native of Iraq who works in logistics for the International Committee of the Red Cross, echoed Lindow’s thoughts.

“When you do logistics, you sit in an office, you get orders, and you have to sort them out, so you’re not really into the action. You don’t see things. But when I came here, I listened to what other people are doing, even other students,” she said.

“The stories they told, like when they had to face something in the field, like terrorism, were heartbreaking. But I’m glad I got to know these stories.”

Enormous Challenges Ahead

In his farewell speech, IDHA course director Mark Little, M.D., did not sugarcoat the challenges the graduates face. According to a June 19 report from the United Nations, he noted, 70.8 million people around the world were displaced at the end of 2018.

“The numbers are staggering. When I sat in your seats in 2009, it was less than 30 million people who were displaced,” he said.

He noted that more than 800,000 cases of cholera occurred in three months in 2017 in Yemen; hospitals have been bombed in Syria; and the need for shelter, food, water, and sanitation has grown every year. This makes it even more important to remember the image of a displaced one of the first things students encountered when they were welcome to campus on June 2.

“We’ve heard that the world is losing compassion. I want you to remember the future of that child. As a child of that age, I was displaced by a natural disaster. I remember the fear of water swirling around my classroom,” he said, noting that his family moved to Australia in 1968 as a direct result of flood damage done to his home in Surrey, England.

“Standing on a desk, I remember the fear of the water rising and the policeman coming in, waist deep, and the fear in his eyes. I remember my anxiety being held in a police cell, not knowing anyone. And I remember the kindness of people who cared for me until I returned to my family.”

A Calling of the Highest Order

For reasons that are known to God alone, Father McShane said, these graduates’ hearts are attuned to the longing for creating the world spoken of in the Bible’s Book of Revelations 21:4.

“Then, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and first earth had passed away. There shall be no more mourning, nor crying out, nor pain, for the former things have passed away,” he said, referencing the scripture. “My friends, this is the vision for your lives. This is the vision to which you will give yourselves to from now until the day you are dead.

“Use your gifts and your mastery of the art of compassion to bring about the realization of this sacred, noble, and divine vision. Glory in being different from others, and realize the dream of a more just society, in which every tear will be wiped away and every heart will sing.”

The ceremony, held on June 29 at the Lincoln Center campus, honored 32 IDHA graduates and two graduates of the Master of Arts in International Humanitarian Action program, a joint degree offered by the International Institute of Humanitarian Affairs and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The students hailed from 24 countries, including Senegal, Dublin, Kuala Lumpur, and Nairobi. They followed the 51st IDHA class, whose course took place in Geneva in November and December.

An Uncertain Future

“It’s the best of times because you leave this gold standard education establishment prepared for your role,” Nason said.

“It’s the worst of times because you will now be called on to bring aid to the needy, rescue the desperate, and protect and save lives in the most unstable and fragile international environment we’ve seen in a very long time.”

She noted that cascading conflicts last year plunged 350 million children and young people into situations where they require humanitarian aid, and that today nearly one person is forcibly removed from their home every two seconds.

“As a diplomat, I regret that we haven’t turned the dial. I regret that we seem to appear to step back and at times and seem paralyzed in the face of profound humanitarian suffering,” she said. But she added that the graduates should take to heart Robert Kennedy’s instructions to send forth that “tiny ripple of hope.”

“That’s what changes the world—that one act gives us hope. Please keep yourself ready for that moment. We need it badly,” she said.

Savoring Bonds Forged

Liwliwa Agbayni, who delivered the IDHA student address, reflected on the deep bonds that she formed with fellow members of her “syndicate,” one of several teams formed among her cohort when they began the monthlong program on June 3.

She and her classmates had a lot in common, she said, with the eggs that they dropped from 16 feet up during an exercise in their engineering course on their second day.

“Thirty days later, [we are]cracked, wounded, bruised, and badly in need of a good night’s sleep, nevertheless, unbroken and still standing strong. Bravo.” she said.

In his farewell speech, IDHA course director Mark Little, M.D., harkened back to his native Australia, where Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog left behind a pewter plaque upon his arrival on the county’s western shore in October 1616.

“He landed in a dry, dusty, hot desolate area, which is where many of you go to look after many of the people that have been displaced around the world,” he said.

Yes We Must

Humanitarian issues aren’t solved purely by humanitarians though; ultimately, they’re solved by politicians, and Little noted that graduates and audience members should not hesitate to speak out to them.

The case of Ali, a 63-year-old Afghani refugee that Australia had been holding in detention on the Micronesian island nation of Nauru, illustrates this perfectly, he said. Ali has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and is in need of palliative care that cannot be provided on Nauru. Australia offered only to send him to Taiwan for hospice care—an option he rejected because no one there speaks his language or is able to perform Shia Muslim rituals and ceremonies on his body. Fortunately, Australian citizens recently got wind of their government’s actions.

“In 48 hours, two and a half thousand Australian doctors and 25,000 members of the Australian public signed a petition and campaigned to have this dying man moved to Australia. He moved on Sunday,” Little said.

“It is up to all of us to speak out. It’s not, ‘Yes we can!’ but, ‘Yes we must!’ Be like Hartog 400 years ago. Leave your mark as a humanitarian and an IIHA graduate. And wherever you go, may your god go with you and keep you.”

The ceremony, held on June 30 at the Lincoln Center campus, honored 25 IDHA graduates and two recipients of the Master of Arts in International Humanitarian Action program. The students hailed from 17 countries around the world, including Italy, Tajikistan, New Zealand, Egypt, Poland, and Pakistan.

The Oscar-winning actor, whose film credits include Taxi Driver, The Godfather: Part II, Raging Bull, and who appeared most recently as Bernard Madoff in HBO’s The Wizard of Lies, told the graduates that they were “true humanitarians” because they “served with compassion and dignity” while making sacrifices and taking “heroic risks.”

“Now you’ve gone through this program so that you can perform your work more effectively,” he said. “You have distinguished yourself here, and you will take those lessons with you for the rest of your life.”

De Niro, who received an honorary diploma, said that while many people might solely deem humanitarian workers as “wonderful people doing heroic work,” he considered them “shining examples of what can be achieved when you find the humanitarian hidden inside.”

“By inspiring others, you increase your impact exponentially,” he said before reading the names of the entire graduating class. “You are my heroes,” he told them.

Bart Vermeiren, who delivered the IDHA participant address, said completing the program is a huge milestone.

“We all embark on a new or old journey in our lives, but one day or another, sooner or later, we will use our IDHA wisdom and put it into practice with our learning experiences to the benefit of ourselves, and, most importantly, to the benefit of the people in need,” he said.

It’s a message that resonated with Naomi Gikonyo, a humanitarian practitioner with nearly a decade of experience in emergency response interventions in countries including Haiti, Libya, South Sudan, and Kenya.

“This program has pushed me to apply a lot of what I’ve learned into the field,” said Gikonyo, who works as an emergency preparedness and response officer for the United Nations World Food Programme. “It’s instrumental because we’re dealing with humanitarian crises with high complexities.”

Brendan Cahill, executive director of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA), said IDHA ceremonies have been held around the globe, from Dublin and Berlin to Seoul and Pretoria.

“You are a treasured part of our IDHA family [from]all over the world,” he said. “Make use of it. Continue to give back, continue to come back, continue to be in touch and be involved with our programs no matter where you are or where we are.”

After 20 years of courses and 3,000 participants representing 140 nationalities, Larry Hollingworth, director of humanitarian programs at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, which runs the IDHA program, said IDHA continues to create impact.

“We are in that unique position that we’re not in uniform, but we find ourselves on the front line,” he told the graduates, whom he said are leading emergency medicine in makeshift hospitals, opening schools in remote camps, and “staying on when others have left.”

“Stand up for your values, and your beliefs. Do what you want to do. Be bold and be brave.”

1. What is the single biggest obstacle facing humanitarian aid workers today?

Without a doubt, the single biggest obstacle is access. We are able to produce a lot of the resources that are needed by the beneficiaries—those refugees or displaced persons. Our problem is that we can’t get to them.

In many of the countries where we operate, we can’t deliver food and other things because of political obstacles. For example, to deliver aid in Syria today, agencies have to cooperate with whatever limits [President] Assad wants to impose—that includes which agency we can deliver aid through, and where the aid can go. Obviously he is not going send aid into the areas that are opposing him. Therefore it makes it very difficult to deliver aid neutrally, impartially, and independently. There are enclaves where no medicine has gone in for years, no anesthetics. You are putting people in medieval conditions. And it’s not just Syria. Almost everywhere we go, oppositions want to stop humanitarian agencies from delivering aid.

2. Is there another significant obstacle?

The other point is that money is tight. We are probably about a billion dollars short for the crises we have today in the world. In the 1990s most of the large agencies were a third of the size they are today and there were not many small independent NGOS. If a crisis got 20 or 30 agencies, that was a good turnout.

There were more than a 1,000 agencies that responded to the 2010 Haiti earthquake crisis. Where did they all come from and the question we could ask—which is suitable to this ground—is how qualified are they to be there? No one wants to deny the good heart, but there are too many agencies vying for the same monies.

3. Is forced migration overloading global humanitarian efforts?

The migration problem is massive. In the humanitarian aid world, we work with internally displaced people and refugees forced from their countries [as opposed to economic migrants]. People are fleeing from violence. They are saying there are 65 million people displaced in the world, a huge number. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any lower.

The economic migrant is the larger portion of migrants–coming from countries in desperate straights because of climate disasters or violence. It is very difficult to measure their numbers, very difficult to control them, very difficult to send them back, and very difficult to house them in your country.

Sadly, the animosity and aggravation that people have toward migrants is going to grow. To be honest, migrant populations are one lever for Britain to have made the choice that it did last week [on Brexit].

If there was peace and there were jobs in their own countries, most migrants would stay. Some people say wouldn’t it be better spending our money on creating peace, rather than providing aid for the people who are displaced. Now, we are back into money and political will.

But we are not doing enough about prevention.

4. How does the IDHA program address these problems? 

One of the strengths of the program is that we are up to date. We look at every crisis as it is today, not from 5 years ago. Every student that we have is going out to today’s crises, and what we did a decade ago no longer applies.The moment you get on the ground in any crisis, in the first few hours everything changes. The police should be there; they’re not. The government should be there; it’s not. Everything is changing constantly.

In order to make sure we are up to date, we change our lecturers each and every term. We bring them in strait out of the field. This session we had a young Kenyan woman who has been in the field for 5 or 6 years. We have two people who were just in Gaza. These lecturers can talk about the ethical or political questions, or even about communications problems, because they were literally just there.

Whether they can tell us that ‘it worked,’ or ‘it would work better with something else,’ they remind us that humanitarian aid is a moving philosophy—and you have to go with it.

Kabba Williams, former child soldier in Sierra Leone

Back in Kabba Williams’ home of Sierra Leone, there is a saying that “a child who is carried on the back doesn’t know how far the journey is.”

Williams, forced to be a rebel child soldier at age 6, has traveled far and knows it. He loses his words as he describes a day he was beaten, tied up, and forced to spend a day in the blazing African sun with taunts that he was to be executed the following day.

He was just 7 or 8 years old.

Williams’ lone journey began when he lost his mother during a raid on his village and was abducted with other children by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

“We were easy to brainwash and cheap to support,” said Williams, who saw murders, machete mutilations, and other “unspeakable things, beyond a human being’s imagination” while in the custody of rebels.

He escaped the RUF while fetching water, but within days was captured by the Sierra Leone Army and sentenced to death. In exchange for his life, he became a government soldier and was trained how to shoot and kill with an AK-47.

In a fortunate twist of fate, a UNICEF representative took him from the army when he was 11 years old and relocated him in the SOS Children’s Village orphanage to receive schooling to develop a “human rights” consciousness.

Five years ago, Williams, who co-founded the African Reformation War Child Advocacy Network (ARWCAN), came to the United States for an advocacy conference and made the difficult decision not to return to Sierra Leone. In April, he gave a lecture at Fordham on his transition from “a culture of violence to one of peace,” stressing the importance education played in his development. He received a scholarship to attend the IDHA summer program.

Williams said he has learned about effective advocacy as well as learning the legal end of humanitarian rights laws. He hopes that his IDHA certificate will lead to advocacy work on behalf of African children, especially children harmed in conflict. He said the African governments “do not want to know about us,” and some western governments are wary of former child soldiers.

“I have a passion for human rights issues, and whatever I can pass on to young people from my journey,” he said. “A world that is fit for children is a world that is fit for everyone.

–Janet Sassi

Mira Baddour, UN commodity tracker

Mira Baddour works with the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). Since she was 19, the 25-year-old native of Syria has sought out work that allows her to help others.

During the Iraqi wars, her country became inundated with refugees. She worked in organizing the provision of storage, transportation, and the distribution of food. Then war broke out in her country.

“My colleagues and I couldn’t understand the idea of Syrian refugees,” said Baddour. “[But] my people were suddenly displaced. It was emotional and very difficult.”

Last year, Baddour was transferred to Liberia to work on the Ebola outbreak. Now that Liberia has been declared Ebola-free, she is ready for the next challenge.

Over the course of her time with the UN, she has worked within its logistics cluster, which organizes various humanitarian relief groups during a crisis. There are nine clusters within the UN, each one around a theme: nutrition, health, water/sanitation, camp coordination, protection, emergency shelter, early recovery, logistics, and telecommunications.

Baddour’s current role as the head of commodity tracking and data management is highly technical. She used her time in the IDHA program to examine two recent evaluations of the UN’s cluster system, in the hopes of eliminating the overlapping of humanitarian services.

She said that UNICEF is in charge of nutrition, while WFP takes the lead on logistics. However, UNICEF and WFP both have a mandate to fight hunger.

Baddour’s study homed in on whether WFP was able to maintain its neutrality as a lead agency for logistics and not prioritize its food programs over those of UNICEF.

Baddour recalls the chaos in the immediate aftermath of the Syrian war, a situation that imprinted on her just how vital it was to make sure partnering agencies work toward the same goal. And she learned that sometimes it gets personal.

“You always feel for the refugees, but when it’s your people you feel it deep in your heart,” she said. “I wanted to deliver the food to those kids—my people.”

–Tom Stoelker

Ram Jee Karki, International Red Cross

Having completed Fordham’s International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance, Ram Jee Karki will return to his relief work in a region that is doubly afflicted—by the aftereffects of both war and natural disaster.

Karki is head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s central north region in Nepal, where a cataclysmic earthquake recently added to the burdens of a nation still addressing the lingering impacts of a decade-long civil war.

At Fordham, he said, he learned much that is applicable to any kind of disaster—whether brought about by nature or by humanity’s depredations—and looks forward to applying it.

“I like humanitarian work—to serve those that are very much distressed, and [in a]difficult situation, because ‘humanitarian’ means ‘to save life,’” he said.

He discovered this calling more than a decade ago, when Bhutanese refugees from a nearby camp started showing up in his hometown of Jhapa, Nepal. A schoolteacher at the time, he saw their plight and decided to change careers, first working as a camp relief coordinator before joining the ICRC in later years.

In his current role, he’s involved in helping people recover—psychologically and socially—from the decade-long civil war that ended in 2006, and in trying to locate people who disappeared during the conflict so they can be reunited with their families.

Families were further disrupted by the earthquake that struck in April, killing more than 8,000 and injuring some 22,000. “Where I work, the earthquake also hit there in those same areas,” he said.

He’s heading back to that area to continue his family reunification efforts and other relief work. He thinks the IDHA program, with its training in the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law, will help him make a greater impact in the future by working internationally.

–Chris Gosier

Eric Goeh-Akue, Jesuit Refugee Service

In the early millennium, Togo, the home country of Eric Goeh-Akue, SJ, erupted in “huge violence” that made him flee to the neighboring country of Benin. He remained there for years as a refugee, receiving a piecemeal education.

Today Father Goeh-Akue works with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Chad to make sure that children in a similar situation don’t go without an education while seeking shelter in refugee camps.

“I joined the Jesuits knowing that JRS was created for Jesuits to work in the field,” he said. “We take care of poor people on the margins, we build schools, and we hire teachers. Education is a basic right.”

Father Goeh-Akue oversees schools in eight different camps in Chad, where refugees from South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria have been streaming for nearly a decade. Together with the United Nations Refugee Agency, JRS operates what amounts to a large school system.

Father Goeh-Akue said his role is to visit and support all of the schools. He said that on his visits he has been most impressed by the girls, who, in many cases, would never have received an education in their home countries.

As the conflicts surrounding Chad have dragged on for years, Father Goeh-Akue said that students are now approaching college age. As a host country, Chad will not be able to provide a university education for refugees.

“These refugees don’t go back to their home countries. They stay in Chad. They have two colleges for refugees, but they’re very expensive.”

Father Goeh-Akue is partnering with the Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins in an effort to see the students off to college after their refugee education. He said that his time at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs has been spent learning more about international law and learning how to support his staff.

“I learned a lot about how to take care of members of my team,” he said. “I used to work as a priest with other Jesuits, but now I work with lay people that have different skills. I learned how to encourage, support, and listen to them and share what they bring to the group.”

 –Tom Stoelker

The graduation ceremony at the Lincoln Center campus honored 50 students from 28 countries who’d completed four weeks of intense training, classwork, and team-building exercises required for the International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance (IDHA).

Commencement speaker David Rieff, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, sketched out a daunting scenario that many graduates—who hail from countries such as Syria, Sierra Leone, and Pakistan—are well acquainted with.

“I think its fair to say that this global crisis of displacement is really unparalleled since the period immediately after the last world war,” said Rieff. “People are now on the move everywhere, and it isn’t simply the publicized crisis in the Mediterranean. It’s the Rohingya and the Bangladeshis, too.”

In Central America, he noted, the nations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are also in a “freefall.”

“There is much more movement in the Americas than perhaps the headlines would have you believe, and there will be more to come,” he said.

What’s particularly challenging is that the United Nations has been incapable of sustaining peace, he said, and though the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme have been successful, their continued success is not a given. When it comes to funding, Rieff said, the public is like a serial monogamist—unable to pay attention to more than a one crisis at a time.

“We now have a global order whose characteristic elements are no longer grounded in law fit for the crisis,” he said. “And that puts on all of you a hugely added burden, because you are in effect navigating in contexts that—to use Marx’s famous phrase—‘All that is solid melts into the air,’ in which the law you think you can rely on actually turns out to be quite unreliable.”

He told the graduates that in spite of all the problems within the humanitarian aid systems, “you are in a very essential way the people standing between what we have now, and complete barbarism. What you do has never been more essential, and never required more heroism and more intelligence.”

Simon Clarke, the student speaker, joked that the students were “darkly warned” about joining IDHA’s “family” when they first arrived on May 31.

“It’s like being indoctrinated into a secret society—the most egalitarian one I’ve ever seen, representing both sexes, all sorts of languages, colors, creeds, and faith,” he said. “[But] we will know each other not through a dodgy handshake but through a laugh and a hug.”

He said Albert Einstein’s observation that the world is dangerous “not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it,” were words to live by.

“Don’t forget—Einstein was a refugee,” he said.

Visiting Professor of Humanitarian Studies Larry Hollingworth said he hoped the program’s graduates are leaving with a greater love, endearment, and respect for humanitarian aid beneficiaries.

“It’s easy to say the beneficiary wants food, water, and protection. I think what the beneficiary wants more than anything is to regain respect and to have dignity,” he said.

“If we have convinced you of that through the course, then go and restore some degree dignity to the beneficiary, and everything will have been worthwhile.”

Read about some of the IDHA graduating class here.

Balancing peace with justice is not an easy task, but it’s the only way to navigate the fraught world of international diplomacy, Ibrahim Gambari told the 43rd graduating class of Fordham’s International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance (IDHA) on June 27.

The U.N. diplomat, scholar, and chancellor of Nigeria’s Kwara State University was in a unique position to deliver the above assessment. As former chairperson of the African Union Commission and the former Joint African Union-United Nations Special Representative for Darfur, he has navigated many a diplomatic briar patch in Africa.

When Omar Al-Bashir, currently under indictment by the International Criminal Court, was elected president of Sudan under questionable circumstances, Gambari had to decide between attending his inauguration, or declining at the risk of alienating a leader who was critical to achieving a peace agreement.

Gambari’s U.N. superiors decided that he should go “but not be seen smiling,” he said. Representatives from the African Union disagreed, however, and said he should express happiness.

Striking the right diplomatic balance is difficult. “How do you smile and not smile at the same time?” he said.

“My own experience and position is that you don’t have to choose between peace and justice; rather, you can sequence them.”

Gambari was presented with an honorary certificate in International Humanitarian Assistance at the event.

The IIHA diploma ceremony honored 35 students from 24 countries, many whom are already working in the humanitarian field. Two students were from Aleppo, Syria, and one from the outskirts of Baghdad.

The ceremony capped an intense month of 200 hours of multi-disciplinary lectures, workshops, and field experiences designed to simulate a humanitarian crisis. The program began in 1997 and has served students from more than 115 nations.

In his talk, Gambari addressed five issues of critical importance to the field of humanitarian assistance: justice; addressing the root causes of conflicts; the role of “spoilers,” or criminal/insurgent groups; how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) factor in the process; and the need find common ground.

Among those, finding common ground is of paramount importance, he said. And getting the attention of warring parties sometimes requires all manner of flattery and cunning. He recalled how one of his professors at the London School of Economics asked him to write an essay for him.

“One of my professors at the London School of Economics asked me to write an essay. He told me ‘Ibrahim, this is the best paper that I’ve read I’ve read in many years, and I’ve been at L.E.S. for 20 years. Except for the following points’—and then he winked—‘Which make your paper complete nonsense.’” Gambari recalled.

“I reminded him he’d just said it was great. And he said ‘That was just to get your attention.’”

In humanitarian work, “I’m afraid you have to use all sorts of tricks to get their attention, because without their attention, you cannot influence anyone.”