A Port McNeill lawyer provides an inside look at a United Nations office

by Michael Seaborn

It is with the deepest shame that I confess that I have become a paper pusher in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Nairobi (UNHCR), a place with no shortage of paper pushers. “Aye, I have so much work to do,” sighs one of my co-workers, a Kenyan lawyer. This is one of the primary activities of the UN bureaucrat: visiting their similarly burdened colleagues and spending a great deal of time discussing how they have so much to do.

Another very popular, and time consuming, pastime is looking for the file. One could grow old here, wandering the many corridors, trying to collect the files you are meant to be working on. This leads to an oft repeated scene in which I approach the person whom the Registry says has the file and endure a tirade about how they don’t have the file, they gave it to so-and-so ages ago and, really, what are those Registry people thinking anyway. I back out, apologizing profusely, and return, empty-handed, to further wander the corridors. Looking for the file is really the ultimate UN bureaucrat activity as it combines spending time with colleagues, complaining, not getting anything done and pointing the finger at another person or department and examining the depths of their incompetence.

The Registry, dark and dusty in the basement, is the domain of the Machiavellian, subterranean creatures, the File Clerks. There, below street level, they guard the files with all the zeal of apostles on a religious mission. If they have a purpose on this earth it is to prevent staff from removing files from the Registry where, possibly, they might suffer irreparable harm or, of greater concern, actually be used to assist a refugee. They are masters at their sacred mission. The Clerks are masters in subtle manipulation and the intrigues of the bureaucratic world. I am a simple, straightforward Canadian who practised law on northern Vancouver Island. When I cross swords with them, I get slaughtered every time.

Early on I was required to spend a week working in the Registry, filing bits of paper. Several years ago there was a scandal at this office: staff were demanding money from refugees to submit them for resettlement to western countries. The office lives very much in the shadow of that episode. So, new staff put in time at the Registry, which never has a shortage of pieces of paper to file, before they have contact with the refugees and become “tainted,” after which the inner sanctum of the Registry is barred to you. I would be locked into the file room, with its thousands upon thousands of dusty, dirty files, with a mound of paper to file and ample time to reflect on how, now in my middle years, I was certainly making fine use of my two university degrees. In that dungeon are mildewed boxes of ancient unused office supplies, parts of refugee files lying in corners with their discolored contents curling up, newer files piled high on tables because they are out of space, with the contents spilling out and mixing together. I would emerge, blinking, into the daylight and have to scrub my hands, which would be black with grime.

I came to Africa asking the question: how can I help these refugees? Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have much company in asking that question. Or perhaps a fairer way to put it is that much about this large operation serves to impede rather than facilitate assistance.

Michael Seaborn works for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

This article was published in the June 2005 issue of BarTalk. © 2005 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.