UNHCR memoirs and biographies: a neglected source for refugee history
Introduction
Written sources are the lifeblood of historians, and those involved in the recent upsurge of refugee history have been assiduous in seeking out archival, secondary and other sources on which to base their work. Relatively little attention has been given, however, to the memoirs and biographies of UNHCR staff members, a growing number of which have been published.
This page provides a listing and brief summary of those that are available in English, as well as links to their publishers where available. It includes some books that are not memoirs but draw substantially on the authors’ personal experiences. It excludes the many books written by UNHCR staff members that lack significant biographical content.
Readers with an interest in refugee, humanitarian and UN history will also be interested to know that the Bodleian Library in Oxford holds the Archives of the United Nations Career Records Project. The objective of the project is “to secure the recollections and memoirs of UK nationals, whether living in Britain or abroad, or of other nationals living in Britain, who were employed by the UN and its specialized agencies.” A full index of the archive can be found here.
Kofi Annan (with Nader Mousavizadeh)
Interventions: a life in war and peace
Best known for his time as UN Secretary-General, a post he held from 1997 to 2006, Kofi Annan of Ghana spent a short time in the early 1980s as UNHCR’s Head of Personnel. He joined the UN Secretariat in1983 and became Head of Peacekeeping a decade later, prior to being appointed to the organization’s top job. Published in 2012, his memoir focuses primarily on the crises and humanitarian emergencies of the post-Cold War era, especially Bosnia and Rwanda.
Martin Barber
Blinded by humanity: inside the UN’s humanitarian operations
Martin Barber started work with UNHCR in Thailand, at the time of the Vietnamese and Cambodian refugee emergencies. He later worked with the UN’s humanitarian operations in Afghanistan and Bosnia, served as the Chief of Policy Development in OCHA, as Director of the UN Mine Action Service. The first five chapters of this engagingly written book will be of primary interest to refugee and humanitarian historians.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/blinded-by-humanity-9780857738066/
Alexander Casella
As its title suggests, this autobiography sets out to be controversial and iconoclastic. But in its scathing portrayal of his UNHCR colleagues, it is actually downright offensive! Despite (or perhaps because of) his prickly character, Casella, an Italian of multinational ancestry, climbed to the top of the UNHCR management tree, with a stint as Director of the organization’s Asia Bureau, in addition to postings in Vientiane, Beirut and Bangkok.
https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/catalogue/livre/breaking-the-rules/38830
Luise Druke
Innovations in refugee protection
A German citizen, Luise Druke had one of the longest and most varied careers of any UNHCR staff member, working in Africa, Central Asia, South-East Asia, Europe and Latin America over a period of 30 years. This 2014 book is not an autobiography, but in it she draws upon that experience to examine the agency’s evolving role in relation to refugee protection and solutions, focusing particularly on case studies of Vietnamese boat people in Singapore, Chilean exile and return, and the repatriation of Namibian refugees from Angola.
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1046956
Martin Gottwald
Beyond principles? A critical look at UNHCR’s organizational culture
Strictly speaking, this book is not a memoir or autobiography, but an examination of “how well UNHCR’s internal culture has remained aligned with its protection mandate's core values and principles amidst a rapidly evolving external environment.” In exploring this theme, however, Gottwald, from Austria, draws extensively on his personal experience as a UNHCR staff member in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Recommended reading for anyone interested in UNHCR’s internal dynamics.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-09033-1
Walter Irvine
Monarchy, revolution and refugees
A teacher and anthropologist before joining UNHCR, Walter Irvine’s book recounts his experience of working for the organization during the Cambodian and Laotian conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s, with particular attention given to the refugees who fled from those countries to Thailand. The book also includes a rare account of the resettlement of Laotian refugees to Argentina, where Irvine served as UNHCR’s Representative.
https://www.accartbooks.com/uk/book/monarchy-revolution-and-refugees/
Mengeshe Kebede
A fulfilling journey through conflicts and contradictions
This autobiography is described as “a coming of age story of an Ethiopian who traversed his origins to become an international UN employee working across cultures in difficult and challenging situations.” The book provides an account of his upbringing in Addis Ababa, the civil war in Lebanon, where he was a student, as well as his work with refugees and displaced people throughout the African continent and in Pakistan.
Sadruddin Aga Khan
Sadruddin Aga Khan: humanitarian and visionary
Written by Diana Miserez, this biography recounts the remarkable life of Sadruddin Aga Khan, an Ismaili Prince with multiple nationalities. He served as the Deputy UNHCR Chief for three years, and in 1966, at the age of 33, became the youngest ever UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He remained in the post for 12 years, overseeing UNHCR’s expansion into the Global South, and overseeing the organization’s response to emergencies in Bangladesh, Burundi, Uganda and Vietnam.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prince-Sadruddin-Aga-Khan-Humanitarian/dp/191087888X
Judith Kumin
Orderly departure from Vietnam: a humanitarian alternative?
A US national, Judith Kumin ended a 30-year career with UNHCR as Director of UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for Europe. In her early days with the organization in the 1980s, she managed an innovative programme designed to allow Vietnamese citizens to resettle elsewhere without having to undertake a dangerous and expensive journey out of the country by boat. She examined this programme in a PhD thesis that forms the basis of this publication.
Graham Lean
Memoirs of a field officer: Thailand and the boat people, 1975-1985
Unlike the other authors featured in this blog, Graham Lean was not a senior UNHCR manager but, as its title indicates, one of the organization’s foot soldiers. His book is a personal account of a junior staff member’s experience of working in Thailand in the aftermath of the conflicts in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, focusing particularly on responses to the influx of ‘boat people’ along the shores of Thailand, Malaysia and other South-East Asian countries.
https://lumphananpress.co.uk/product/memoirs-of-a-field-officer-by-graham-lean/
Nicholas Morris
As it happened: accounts of experiences with UNHCR
This 390-page and nine-chapter Open Access publication by Nicholas Morris, who worked with UNHCR for some 27 years, provides a wealth of first-hand evidence relating to refugee and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, Cyprus, the Gulf, Namibia, Southern Rhodesia and Sudan. It also provides an inside account of the governance crisis that hit UNHCR at the end of the 1980s and UNHCR’s role in the process of UN humanitarian reform in the mid-1990s.
https://www.unhcr.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/sites/48/2024/11/As-It-Happened.pdf
Sadako Ogata
The turbulent decade: confronting the refugee crisis of the 1990s
Previously a little-known academic, the Japanese Sadako Ogata was thrust into the international spotlight in the 1990s when, as the first female UNHCR chief, she managed the organization’s widely acclaimed response to the decade’s long sequence of emergencies, including those covered in this book: Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Great Lakes Region of Africa and Iraq. While the book contains few revelations, it is the only substantive memoir written by any former High Commissioner for Refugees.
https://wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393929225-the-turbulent-decade
Sergio Vieira de Mello
Chasing the flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the fight to save the world
Sergio Vieira de Mello, a high-flying Brazilian, made his way through the ranks of UNHCR to become its Assistant High Commissioner, after serving in countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru and Sudan. He later became the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights and Special Envoy to Iraq, where he was killed in a bomb attack. The author of this biography, Samantha Power, who went on to become the US Ambassador to the UN under the Obama administration, was clearly captivated by his charisma.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55275/chasing-the-flame-by-samantha-power/9780141020815
