Q&A - Christine Petrie, national resettlement director |
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November 2nd, 2005 - 06:53PM |
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Young refugees from Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Vietnam at an IRC picnic in San Diego Meet Christine Petrie, the International Rescue Committee's national resettlement director. Christine oversees the design and implementation of the roughly three-dozen IRC national social service programs in 22 resettlement offices in such cities as New York, Atlanta, Boston and San Francisco. She also oversees the IRC’s U.S. based anti-human trafficking initiative. Q. What is a refugee? A. A refugee is an individual who has fled his or her own country due to a well-founded fear of persecution. It traces back to the person’s life being in danger because of political or religious belief or affiliation as opposed to economic migrants who elect to migrate to another location. For refugees it is truly a life and death situation to flee. Q. How many refugees are there in the world? A. The estimate is about 13 million. Q. What is the objective of the IRC’s resettlement effort? A. The whole concept of resettlement services is assist refugees from the time they arrive in the United States until they become self-sufficient. To achieve that goal we have to provide safe and sanitary housing, access to health care, school enrollment for children, application for public benefits for which they are eligible and job preparation and placement. Q. Where do these refugees come from? A. Right now we are resettling refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia in east Africa and Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa. We also serve a good number of Cuban refugees. In fiscal year 2006 we expect to assist a good number of Burmese refugees from Thailand. Q. What are some of the cultural challenges that refugees coming to the United States face? A. A lot of it depends on how long refugees have been in a camp situation. The challenges increase for those in protracted camp living situations. Their physical and mental well-being deteriorates. Health and nutrition takes its toll after some period of time. Q. What is your current role in the Katrina crisis? A. We are serving as technical advisors to shape a comprehensive social services model that will ultimately assist hundreds of thousands of Louisianans displaced within the state. It will part of a larger plan to conduct outreach to those displaced from the state who are currently living in some 40 other states. Q. What do you see as the needs that displaced Katrina and Rita victims face at this moment? A. We are dealing with a population that has essentially lost all of their possessions. They could be separated form family members. They have lost a sense of community and they are concerned about their children’s future. We also have tens of thousands of individuals who are living in shelter situations with limited or no privacy many of which have health issues. In addition there is a great uncertainty about what their future holds. In that context, we feel that the best approach to addressing these issues is for each family to have an individual service delivery plan. What it does is allow individuals to participate in their own plan for services that will be provided for the near future. Their primary purpose is to serve the families one on one and work with them to create a tailor made services plan. There is no cookie cutter response to a disaster like Katrina. In order to bring order to the chaos there has to be an individual family approach. Q. Can you talk a bit about your efforts in the anti-trafficking field? A. We’ve assisted numerous victims with social services and legal services. The U.S. State department estimates that about 20,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. Each year. These are individuals who have been coerced or misled. They are typically promised suitable employment and economic stability. Then they are enslaved where they lose any identity and basic rights. Posted By: Greg Beals | Hurricane Katrina, Refugees in the U.S. Permalink |
