story from the field Congo A s a senior external relations


officer for UNHCR in the Democratic Republic of (DRC), Céline Schmitt sees


firsthand how difficult it can be for refugee families. Often fearing for their lives, and sometimes separated from their children or extended kin, families struggle to maintain any sense of their past lives. It was Schmitt’s own close relationship with both of her grandfathers that inspired her to become a humanitarian worker.


Schmitt was born in France and grew up listening to her grandfathers’ stories of the Second World War, when Nazi- occupied France conscripted French men into the army. “My grandfather told me that he was forced to fight for Germany and was then captured in Russia,” she says. “Troughout his life, he remembered the help he received from the Red Cross, particularly from the delegate who interviewed him and gave him food while in captivity. Tis delegate had a lasting impression on my grandfather. Even though he did not know who or what this organization was, he still remembered that moment of help in a time of desperation.”


It was this story as well as her other grandfather’s moving account of how a perfect stranger helped him to survive— baking a birthday cake out of nothing for the desperately cold and hungry 18- year old forced to fight in the Danzig Corridor—that showed her how small but significant actions can leave a lasting legacy on a life.


Now 35, Schmitt has worked for UNHCR since 2007. She began in Geneva and is now based in Kinshasa, DRC. DRC shares a border with the Central African Republic (CAR), one of the most devastating emergencies that UNHCR faces. In total, more than 893,000 people have been forcibly displaced by violence


in neighbouring CAR, with about 88,000 fleeing to DRC. © F. Noy 2014


Schmitt’s job is to act as a voice for refugees, telling their stories to the media, donors and agency partners. She spends a great deal of her time in the field, working to solve a myriad of


issues refugees face every day, from


basic survival needs to protection, human rights, medical and educational concerns.


“I was in the Mole refugee camp in the Northern DRC where there are many university and high school students from Bangui, the capital city of CAR,” she explains, giving an example of her work. “Tey were forcibly recruited by the army; if they resisted, they were killed.”


With different groups of both Muslim and Christian refugees from CAR, and no activities in the camp for young people, tensions run high. Listening to the young people’s concerns, Schmitt and


the UNHCR team,


along with the help of an outside agency, ADSSE (Association pour le Développement Social et la Sauvegarde de l’environnement), started a library, a cyber café and a capoeira group.


Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines dance, acrobatics and music in one energetic performance, and is also used as a peace-building activity. It


THEY WERE FORCIBLY RECRUITED BY THE ARMY; IF THEY RESISTED, THEY WERE KILLED.


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