Inside Look: How UNICEF Protects and Supports Child Refugees

Sara Bordas Eddy, Chief of Humanitarian Field Support for UNICEF's Office of Emergency Programs, shares insights into UNICEF's work delivering critical aid and protection to children uprooted by conflict and other crises.

By the end of 2022 there were 43.3 million children living in forced displacement — some for their entire childhood. That number, in fact, has doubled over the past decade.

You have spent much of your career working with displaced children — first in the field, and now as Chief of Humanitarian Field Support for the Office of Emergency Programs. Before we talk about your current job, please explain: What does UNICEF generally do when a crisis drives children from their homes? 

SARA BORDAS EDDY: We do many things.

The most important job is help get the children to safety, and provide direct lifesaving interventions. Then once that is done, we can turn to critical long term development issues and challenges.

Teamwork is key. We work as part of a really dedicated and talented multi-disciplinary team from the UN, in collaboration with international and local partners. We are part of a much larger response system.

Our approach is to bring a children-centric skill set to challenging situations, so we try to see things from their perspective — to put ourselves in the minds of the children and imagine what they are seeing and dealing with, and that guides us. We try to provide support and guidance to their caregivers too.  

We know that when a child is caught in a conflict zone or forced to flee, the most pervasive long-term impacts come not only from direct exposure to the violence itself, but also from the hunger, disease and loss of access to health care and education that often come with it.

So it’s not just about being traumatized. It's about being hungry, it's about losing access to basic sanitation, about getting sick. All of these impacts have serious consequences for a child's development.

The most pervasive long-term impacts come not only from direct exposure to the violence itself, but also from the hunger, disease and loss of access to health care and education that often come with it.

UNICEF has people on the ground working in countries around the world to protect children who are often the most vulnerable when there is a natural disaster or conflict breaks out. Usually that involves supporting and working with local organizations and governments, and other international partners at the UN and outside of it.

UNICEF is the UN lead in a number of sectors; we work with local partners on the ground to ensure access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), nutrition, education and child protection. When children are internally displaced or become refugees, we work to reunify families, and to protect children from exploitation and trafficking. 

Sometimes we even help rescue them from danger: in early June, a member of our team helped evacuate 300 Sudanese children trapped in an orphanage on the front lines of fighting in Khartoum, after 71 children had died there from hunger and illness. Local volunteers were also involved as was the  Sudanese health ministry and the Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which helped to organize the convoy of buses from Khartoum. It was, like so much of our work, a team effort.

You started out working with displaced children in Indonesia.  What was that like? 

SARA BORDAS EDDY: My first job with UNICEF was in child protection, helping children from areas of Banda Aceh affected by the 2004 tsunami, which was one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history. There were 100-foot waves, which wiped out areas and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

In 2010, I was involved with the big Haiti earthquake response, where we also had a lot of cases of separated and unaccompanied children. Then from 2015-2018, I was chief of field operations and emergency response in Bangladesh, when Rohingya refugees fled genocide in Myanmar and crossed over into refugee camps there. We had done scenario planning and expected 150,000. More than 1 million came in less than a month. So I’ve seen it from top to bottom.

But I’ll start at the beginning. When many children first arrive in temporary camps or shelters, they are lost or have been separated from their primary caregivers. So one of the most important things we do is help to make sure they are in contact with their caregivers, and to reunify them, if that is possible.

Another important job is just to help children feel safe, and allow them to just be kids again.

How does UNICEF do that?

SARA BORDAS EDDY: UNICEF has what we call Child-Friendly Spaces — places where kids can go to get a break, where they can play, learn and just be kids. If their caregivers are with them, the caregivers can get a cup of coffee. 

Often this is one of the first places newly arriving children will go, and it's one of the first places I worked at UNICEF. Play can go a long way towards calming a child’s nerves. That’s why we try to set up schools and play areas quickly. It’s critical to give displaced children a sense of normalcy.

Many of these children must be traumatized. How can you help? 

SARA BORDAS EDDY: We try to spot those cases that are more worrisome, so we can get them extra help and attention if they need it. Sometimes it’s the silent children. Sometimes you can see it in their artwork.

I’ll never forget a little Rohingya girl showing me a drawing she made of some kids playing soccer and then getting shot by soldiers. One of the kids in the drawing was her brother. It’s important to express yourself when going through the trauma, so you're not stuck with it. And we have specialists who can work with children.

Another important job is just to help children feel safe, and allow them to just be kids again ... Play can go a long way towards calming a child’s nerves. 

I’m a big believer that with time, good interventions and proper care, people who come from very traumatic experiences can recover, and turn their lives around. It’s not just psychosocial support. We work a lot to help caregivers. And there needs to be a lot of attention on the basic needs, the nutrition part, the hygiene part, because everything is connected. When you don't sleep, and don't eat, you're not well in the head.

Often we don't know when a crisis is going to end. That's another reason why it’s so important to bring that sense of normalcy, not only from a protection standpoint but from a basic needs angle as well. You should see the smiles of kids in this context when they go to school.

This is also why, when we preposition emergency supplies, as we did near the front lines in Ukraine, for instance, in addition to vaccines, medicines, hygiene kits, water purification tablets, etc., we also have educational kits and what we call recreational kits, which include things like board games and soccer balls.

So what does it mean to be Chief of the Humanitarian Field Support section of UNICEF's Office of Emergency Programs? What does your current job entail?

SARA BORDAS EDDY: I'm in charge, with my team, of monitoring the major crises that are happening in the world, giving strategic advice, and doing what we can here in New York to make sure our teams have what they need. 

That can mean working with donors to raise more funds, meeting with high-level officials from host countries to negotiate access, and bringing problems and advocating for them at the highest levels of the organization. Usually we are monitoring about 20 crises at a time. 

I have teams here that mirror the regional teams we have out in the field in UNICEF. If there's any bottleneck out in the field, if there are really important red flags and areas where we need to escalate our attention and effort, we directly coordinate with the emergency director of UNICEF and the deputy executive director focused on humanitarian efforts. We provide strategic recommendations and we will escalate our efforts in New York to help.

For example, we are having a lot of trouble now in Sudan just getting visas to go in. So what do we do? We try to talk to the permanent Sudanese mission here to say, can we please accelerate the visas? We're trying to get in and help. We also have a $22 million imminent gap in funding needed to buy our Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), which we use to treat malnourished children.

After the deputy representative in Sudan mentioned the gap in a WhatsApp conversation, I asked her to break it down for me so I could bring something concrete to the donors.  And that's how we came up with $22 million. Right away, we then called the major donors — like BHA [Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance] at USAID — and they actually responded positively that they're going to support us.   

As part of my job, I also travel with high-level delegations drawn from other UN agencies and NGOs to provide technical advice, or consult on humanitarian responses and sustainable approaches. We coordinate and consult closely with our partners. And we are constantly evaluating and critiquing how to improve what we do. The stakes are high. So all of us take this very seriously.

We coordinate and consult closely with our partners. And we are constantly evaluating and critiquing how to improve what we do. The stakes are high. So all of us take this very seriously.

I was in Sudan a month before the conflictbroke out, as part of a high-level mission assessing the programs and helping advise on ways forward. We were talking about ways to find more permanent solutions for those still in camps after being displaced during the 2003 Darfur crisis — what had worked and needed to be scaled up, and how we might begin returning some people to their homes of origin. Those efforts are, of course, now on hold.

After that I was in Haiti as part of a high-level emergency directors group sent to evaluate the severity of the situation on the ground and whether it would be feasible, in the current chaotic environment, to get the access we needed to help. Ultimately we determined that we needed to do more and that it would be possible to operate in the area. And, most importantly, that we could not leave Haitians behind. 

Can you explain how things work at the beginning of conflict? What role does your team play when a surge in displaced people or refugees is expected?     

SARA BORDAS EDDY: Sure. We have three different levels of emergency based on the scale, complexity, urgency of a situation and capacity of our teams on the ground, with Level 3 being the highest.

A Level 1 can be any crisis in the world where we have an appeal, and it's considered that the country office has enough capacity to run it on their own. Level 2 is when the crisis needs additional support, and it's coordinated, usually supported by the regional office. And L-3 is when we consider that it's too much of a crisis and we need to put the whole organization in support to that country office.

Escalations to L-3 usually happen at the beginning of conflict, or after a big natural disaster. We have protocols and systems in place, emergency procedures that kick in. We have emergency management meetings for all the areas where assistance needs to be escalated. Usually there is so much information in so many coordination meetings, somebody needs to track it, which is the job of my team. We track all the efforts, advise on strategy, report upwards to the highest levels, and identify areas where there are problems or red flags — places where teams in the field need help, where we need to work around a problem and find a solution, where more resources and attention are needed. 

After the Haiti trip, we escalated our efforts there to an L-3. Sudan went from L-1 to L-3 after the current conflict broke out. Ukraine was L-3 for a long time, logically, and it's still giving us a lot of work. But we transitioned to an L-2 because they have the capacity, they have the money that they need, and it's more reacting to problems like the dam disaster and trying to get to the non-government controlled areas to the east, to really reach the last mile. So that is difficult, but it's more manageable than it was at the beginning.

Let’s talk about Ukraine. I imagine the approach is different for a crisis in a middle-income country vs. a lower-income country.

SARA BORDAS EDDY: Yes, it's completely different. When you're in a middle-income country like Ukraine, you are working with civil society, academia and government. You're trying to promote better policies, a better curriculum for education, better protection services, social welfare systems. In other words, the focus is on supporting development. 

When a crisis hits, of course, the modus operandi completely switches. The emphasis is on basic lifesaving interventions. You need more boots on the ground to quickly assess needs, deliver supplies directly or through partners. The money is used and channeled differently. We need to quickly set up services to reach the kids. It completely changes the way we work.

When a crisis hits, of course, the modus operandi completely switches. You need more boots on the ground to quickly assess needs, deliver supplies directly or through partners. The money is used and channeled differently. We need to quickly set up services to reach the kids. It completely changes the way we work.

In extreme situations, we do direct implementation with our own staff. One time a member of my team in Bangladesh helped a Rohingya woman deliver a baby as soon as she had crossed the river and was safely out of Myanmar.  

Before the war started in Ukraine, we had 50 staffers in country, and they were used to doing another type of work; now we're at 400.

Early on, we were all hands on deck — sending in specialists from HQ, the regional office and other country offices with emergency experience to help the existing country staff understand how to distribute aid, find the right partners in decentralized areas, figure the right supply routes, all to reach the children that are more difficult to get to, and set up the right programs.

We have at our disposal the ERT [emergency response team], which consists of four emergency coordinators from my team and representatives from all different UNICEF areas — the supply division, human resources, water and sanitation, child protection, etc. We had ERT members in Afghanistan right after the Taliban took over, in Ukraine right after the war started, in Haiti right after the last earthquake and latest flare-up with the gangs, and there's a group of them in Sudan now. The ERT helps the country office switch gears. We keep hiring and sending more people into the field as we go along, while collaborating and consulting closely with local and international partners as part of a much bigger response system. 

It must be hard for staff members more accustomed to development work to make that shift.

SARA BORDAS EDDY: You have to be mindful that the country office sometimes is actually very deeply affected. And that was the case of Ukraine. In Ukraine, the international staff is affected, of course — suddenly they're in the middle of a war and it's difficult. They’re going to bunkers every day. It's complicated. But for the national staff, it's much worse. You’re worried about your family. Should you get out of the country? Should you evacuate? Should you leave UNICEF?

I remember when a massive earthquake hit Haiti in 2010. I was in New York, and we had the traditional emergency management meeting where the key people in New York were sitting around the table, and we called the country office and the regional office is connected and I remember, we were like, "Okay, it just happened. So tell us how, how's the situation? Have you assessed the situation?’" It had been one day, and the response was, "Actually, we are hungry and we need water for ourselves." I’ll never forget that. It was really a wake-up call; and made me internalize that first you need to be well yourself to be able to help others.

The same is happening right now in Sudan. We evacuated the majority of the international team. That office has more than 300 people on staff; the national staff are now all over the country regrouping and trying to find their way or getting out. We have now only 10 international staff left and based from Port Sudan. It's going to be quite complicated until we get the right capacity on the ground. 

In Haiti some of our national staff can’t continue. It’s too much for them. They're scared for their lives constantly. All national staff have been affected directly or indirectly by kidnappings.

What do the emergency coordinators do when you send them over? 

SARA BORDAS EDDY: It depends on what the country office needs most, how well prepared they were, and how complex the operating environment.

Take Sudan, for example. When I visited Sudan in February, we knew that the political situation was fragile, but there had been some agreements and progress. There were going to be elections. We were working day and night on what we call the nexus — where humanitarian work and development work intersect — and doing the scenario planning. Working on more sustainable solutions for addressing very high numbers and protracted caseload of IDPs [internally displaced persons], for example. Thinking how can we be more agile when we have flare-ups in other parts of the country.

But what happened a month ago was not considered a very likely scenario. A lot of us were shocked. It was one of the scenarios that could happen, but it was not considered highly probable. This is an example of how the situation on the ground can switch so quickly.

When conflict broke out a month later, the UN had to get out of Khartoum because it was very dangerous, and evacuated the majority of the staff through Port Sudan, but some essential staff have remained.

So the two-person ERT team that was sent in includes an emergency coordinator from my team, and they are doing many things: finding ways to accommodate the country staff, looking at all the supply routes in a rapidly changing environment, ironing out bottlenecks such as bureaucratic impediments — customs clearances, travel authorizations, etc. — and making strategic choices as to which programs need to be prioritized.

The warehouse we had in Khartoum was looted and we lost a lot of supplies. But luckily we had a lot of prepositioned stocks in Sudan in different locations. We had previously done emergency preparedness planning — as we do every year — because in Sudan natural disasters like flooding are cyclical. So we were prepared to a certain extent. 

Finding local transporters to distribute supplies, however, was a different matter. Usually you’re working with the biggest companies, and suddenly you have Khartoum down, you have the warehouse looted. You need to see who is actually still operating, and maybe it's the same companies you were working with before, maybe not. And right now, there's a problem just getting cash, so we needed to find local institutions that are going to give us the local currency so we can pay the different partners. 

After a big natural disaster, there are similar struggles, but the big difference is, you can go all in, assess, and start responding quickly, with a big team deployed quickly into affected areas.                       

What about Haiti? You mentioned you were part of the delegation that escalated UNICEF efforts to L-3. Tell us more about that.    

SARA BORDAS EDDY: I think the turning point for us was when we realized we could operate inside the country. It wasn't just UNICEF. There were representatives from other UN agencies, NGOs and other partners. We held meetings with government and civil society to help our teams on the ground negotiate better access in the neighborhoods controlled by the gangs. Of course you need to make sure that no humanitarian is going to be attacked and to try to set up a system in place with them so we can actually go in and do our work. It was so important to verify directly that it was feasible.

They knew the situation was catastrophic. The sheer numbers of children in Haiti with urgent needs are smaller than, say, the numbers in Afghanistan or Ukraine. But you cannot look at it that way. You need to compare Haiti today with Haiti of 10, or even just two years ago.

The situation in Haiti has never been worse, honestly. I have never seen Haiti like this.

The situation in Haiti has never been worse, honestly. I have never seen Haiti like this. I was there in the early 2000s when there was a coup and riots in the capital, and we had to evacuate. So I've been in critical moments in Haiti, but now the degradation is worse than it’s ever been. The whole upper class has left the country, and the private sector is shutting down. Kidnappings are constant. The government of Haiti was always quite fragile, but with the gangs controlling most of the capital, and spreading into areas outside Port-au-Prince, the country is basically close to anarchy.

So, as you can imagine, the nutrition situation of the kids has gotten worse. Haiti had never had so many malnourished children as we have now. And kids are facing so many protection challenges, from not being able to go to school, to the risk of being recruited by gangs to sexual violence.

How do you overcome donor fatigue? 

SARA BORDAS EDDY: The best approach is to show in a convincing way that we are good at our job and we're being cost effective. When you talk to donors, it’s clear that they want to save lives. But there are limited resources. So you need to be very tight, spend the money efficiently and guard against corruption.

As donors have become more discerning, we’ve tried to be very specific. We don't say we're going to fix everything, just give us money. You have to be very concrete. We don't say we need money for all the malnourished children in Sudan. Instead, we explain the cost of inaction, like,"'if we don't get $22 million now, we're not going to make it past September.’"That's compelling and concrete. The times have changed, and we are real partners with donors. We’re talking with the donors all the time, offering very concrete examples, and telling them we are in this together. 

How did you get into this line of work, and how do you maintain your optimism in the face of so much pain and suffering? 

SARA BORDAS EDDY: I have always been a positive person. Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to work for the UN. Some people want to be actors. But I always dreamt of this. And I almost didn’t. In my 20s, I was in Barcelona, working as an economist in the private sector very far away from this reality. Then I had one of those shocks in life that make you see things differently. When my sister was 16 she was in a motorcycle accident that left her in a wheelchair and could have killed her. It was the second difficult family situation in my life — my brother died when I was 10, and he was 8.

I remember talking to my mom about how precious life was and how important it was to try to do what you're passionate about. So basically, I took a three-month break, went to New York and worked at the UN as an intern and I never left.  

But it's very difficult in this line of work to maintain balance. Extremely difficult. It’s something you just have to manage. I’ve been burned out a couple times. I've gotten better at protecting myself from burnout, about reading the signs, and doing things that help me reset. I think having children has helped keep me grounded.

I try not to get emotional, because that's not my job. My job is to solve problems. Sometimes you can't help it though. When I saw the 300 kids rescued from the orphanage in Sudan, I got emotional because my children are adopted and I felt that connection. When the Haiti effort started, I was a little bit more emotional because my son Carlos is from Haiti.  

Sometimes our best efforts do break down, but you can't give up. We can still do things. We can still help.

Sometimes our best efforts do break down, but you can't give up. We can still do things. We can still help. Even when there's a setback, I think, I'm still useful. I can still make someone happy. I can still make someone's life better, and that is good enough for me. Plus my team is hardcore. They're so good. 

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