United Nations Expert to Discuss Middle East Refugees

The Stevenson Center on Democracy will host a program on the plight and promise of refugees caught in the "Arab Spring" on Nov. 13.

As part of the Dialogues in Democracy series, the center has invited Karen Koning AbuZayd, expert on the Middle East refugee situation, to share her insights at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Stevenson Center on Democracy, 25200 N. St. Mary’s Road, Libertyville.

AbuZayd, recently retired commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, helped to oversee the education, health, social services and micro-enterprise programs for 4.6 million Palestine refugees from her base in Gaza beginning in 2005.

Before joining UNRWA, AbuZayd worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for 19 years. She began her humanitarian career in Sudan in 1981, dealing with Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees fleeing from war and famine in their own countries.

From Sudan, she moved to Namibia in 1989 to help coordinate the return of apartheid-era refugees, a repatriation operation which led to elections and independence. A year later, the Liberian civil war erupted and AbuZayd moved to Sierra Leone to head the UNHCR office in Freetown, initiating a new emergency response that settled 100,000 Liberians in 600 villages along the Liberian/Sierra Leone border.

From 1991 to 1993 in UNHCR’s Geneva headquarters, AbuZayd directed the South African repatriation operation and the Kenya-Somali cross-border operation. She left Geneva to go to Sarajevo as chief of mission for two years during the Bosnian war. Four million displaced and war-affected people were kept alive by UNHCR’s airlift and convoy activities, while thousands more were protected from ethnic cleansing by the UNHCR presence.

AbuZayd was awarded the Spanish/Catalonia Peace Prize for her work highlighting the achievements of UNRWA’s education programs.

Information provided by Stevenson Center on Democracy.