We were dealing with actual human beings, and I could put my head to the pillow at night knowing that what I did made a real difference in people’s lives—people I could see and feel and meet and touch and actually talk to. That kind of direct connection, that’s something that UNHCR affords that’s truly extraordinary.
—Shashi Tharoor, former UN under-secretary-general for communications and public information
To put a face on the UN, it’s helpful to listen as one of its former staff members talks about his early years in the UN as an idealistic young administrator out to learn about the world. Shashi Tharoor, who was born in London and educated in India and the United States, in 1978 became a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which assists refugees in resettling. He was posted to Singapore from 1981 to 1984 to help organize efforts to aid the thousands of Vietnamese fleeing their homeland in the aftermath of the collapse of the Saigon government and the takeover of the country by the communists in 1975. From 1989 to 1996, Tharoor was part of the peacekeeping office of the Secretariat as a special assistant to the under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations. He then served as a senior adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan before becoming under-secretary-general for communications and public information in 2002. He made a bid to succeed Kofi Annan as secretary-general in 2006 and left the UN early the next year. In an interview at his UN office, Tharoor recalled his challenging work as a new staff member of the UNHCR.
Under-Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor addresses a United Nations forum on the information age, November 29, 2006. UN Photo / Paulo Filgueiras.
“The High Commissioner for Refugees was a great place to begin my career because it really attracts a lot of idealists, in those days in particular. What really brought me to a conviction of the indispensability of the UN was working for UNHCR in the field. I arrived in Singapore at the peak of the Vietnamese boat-people crisis. There were four thousand refugees living at the camp, sleeping twenty-five, thirty to a room this size. The situation had become totally unmanageable. When refugees left Vietnam by boat, they were picked up by boats sailing into Singapore. The Singapore government was very unhappy about having refugees come in, and they manifested this by making difficult the disembarkation of some of these refugees and having nothing to do with the camps themselves. Other countries who were receiving Vietnamese refugees ran their own camps, usually with their military, whereas in Singapore the UN was asked to run their camps.
“UNHCR in those days believed it was not an operational agency, so we weren’t supposed to be running camps. It was an extraordinary challenge for someone who was in their twenties as I was. I essentially invented operational partners by going to churches and church groups and saying, ‘Put your label on us and say you’re the operational partner, and I will raise money to get the staff and we will run the camp.’ I got volunteers from the city, including wives of diplomats, to come in and teach refugees and run camps. I took donations from the community for the benefit of the refugees. I got refugees to run their own democracy, elect their own camp leader.
“On the diplomatic side, there was dealing with a tough government, trying to use the power of my office to get them to cooperate. Church groups can go and help refugees, volunteers can go and help refugees, but only the UN can go to a government. I would tell officials, ‘You have an obligation to honor your international commitment to this organization.’ Even if they’re not signatories to the UN convention, as a member of the General Assembly they’re bound by the statute of the organization, which is a General Assembly resolution. We expect them to honor their role as a government and a member of the UN.
“We had to invent whole new procedures. For example, when ships came in, [the authorities] insisted that every ship that had refugees had to provide a guarantee that the refugees would be resettled. Then they realized that some of the guarantees were worthless because some of the ships were from Bangladesh and India and flag-of-convenience ships flying the Liberian flag or the Panamanian flag. What use was a letter of guarantee from Liberia that they will resettle their refugees?
“The Singaporeans then wanted a letter from a country of resettlement. We had to invent a scheme, where we had looked into the ownership of a ship and got a country of registration to actually provide the guarantees, and then there were the weekly meetings in my office with the immigration chiefs of embassies. It’s a sobering thought that there are kids growing up French, or Canadian, or American today because of my skill or lack thereof in persuading an immigration officer to bend the rules.
“Every month more were arriving. I would imagine somewhere between twelve thousand and twenty thousand refugees passed through my hands in Singapore. In one case, for example, a family left for Singapore on a tiny boat with a cannibalized tractor engine. It wasn’t a proper motor, and sure enough, it conked out, and they were drifting on the high seas. They ran out of food, out of water, and they were subsisting on rainwater and hope. What do the parents do? They slit their fingers to get their babies to suck their own blood in order to survive. They were finally rescued by an American ship, and they were so weak they couldn’t stand up; they had to be lifted out of the boat. We rushed them into intensive care in the hospital as soon as we could disembark them. Now, to see that same family three or four months later, healthy, well fed, well rested, well dressed, heading off to new lives in the United States, there is simply no job that could compare with that sort of thing—pure human satisfaction.
“When Poland declared martial law in December 1981, do you remember the Solidarity movement [labor union] and all of that? A Polish ship docked in Singapore on a Saturday, and four or five Polish seamen jumped ship and looked up the UN in the phone book and came to my office and wanted asylum. I had no authority to grant asylum. I woke up the director of international protections of the UNHCR and said, ‘What do I do?’ The guy said, ‘Follow the convention, interview these people, and determine if in your view they should have refugee status. If you do, they are refugees.’
“It was quite a drama. I interviewed them. I felt that they had a credible case. They said they were supporters of Solidarity, and if they went back they would be locked up, so they jumped ship. I said, ‘I recognize you as refugees,’ and basically said to the Singaporeans, ‘You’ve got to let these people stay.’ The Singaporeans were furious, but I contacted some embassies and said, ‘Could you try and take these people?’ We worked out a scheme. The Singaporeans retaliated by banning shore leave for all Polish seamen. They kept saying, ‘You are only here to look after the Vietnamese.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Vietnamese happen to be my caseload, but anybody else who comes in, I’m legally mandated under the statute of the office to help them.’
“A couple of months after this first episode, I got a frantic call from the Singaporeans and the Americans, one after the other. A Polish sailor had jumped ship and swum to an American destroyer in the port. Singapore naval police and immigration police said he had to be handed over because he was illegal. The American captain said that the sailor was fleeing communism and he would not surrender him. There was a diplomatic standoff. Neither side wanted this to hit the press, but the Singaporeans wouldn’t let the American ship sail with the Polish seaman on board, and the Polish seaman couldn’t go back to his ship. The Americans allowed the Singaporeans to take him off the ship under the condition that he be brought to me. He was brought to the US consul’s office in the embassy, where it was determined he had refugee status, at which point we took charge and put him in a little hotel in Singapore (where it’s not an inexpensive proposition for the UN, I can tell you).
“Then I started putting heat on the Americans, saying, ‘Take him because we solved the problem for you and you have to resettle him.’ It dragged on for a couple of months before the United States agreed to take him. A new consul arrived and was very helpful and said that he would take charge.
“I got a lovely postcard from San Diego from this Polish seaman, saying, ‘I never will forget you, Mr. Shashi.’ One of the precious souvenirs of my career!
“Singapore was such an extraordinary period, and among other things, it convinced me about the indispensability of the UN cause. Most things I’ve done under the UN, only the UN could have done. The UN has a hell of a lot of advantages in dealing with authorities. There are so many stories in which the governmental influence that the UN can bring to bear changes the lives and fortunes of people who are in danger or distress.”