BLOG

Tonight, at InterAction’s Forum 2009, I am honored to be introducing the former president of Refugees International, Lionel Rosenblatt, as he receives the prestigious Julia Taft Award.  The award acknowledges the extraordinary efforts of individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the humanitarian and development community, and it is difficult to think of anyone more deserving of this award than Lionel. The following is a transcript of my introduction:

It’s a great honor for me to introduce Lionel Rosenblatt, my friend and mentor, as he receives the Julia Taft Award. Nobody deserves it more. Lionel has devoted his life to refugee protection and engineering imaginative resettlement solutions for refugees. His closest ally was Julia Taft, but he also had help from many others, including Shep Lowman.

I would like to focus on just one year in Lionel’s long and brilliant career.

In 1979, during the Cambodian Genocide, Lionel was the refugee coordinator in Thailand. During that year he worked with and inspired a generation of leaders in refugee protection. These included Sue Morton, the founder of Refugees International and Sheppie and Mort Abramowitz. Mort, who was then the US Ambassador to Thailand, went on to co-found the International Crisis Group, and Sheppie has been a stalwart of the International Rescue Committee. Mark Malloch-Brown helped Mort found the Crisis Group and went on to become deputy Secretary General of the United Nations and a leader in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet. Also, Bob Devecchi, who became the president of the IRC, and Lavinia Limon, head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

Richard Holbrooke is included; he had worked with Lionel in Vietnam. Holbrooke taught him the importance of bringing politicians to refugee camps. Holbrooke brought Rosalyn Carter to Thailand, and her involvement helped convince President Carter to make a huge commitment to the protections and resettlement of refugees from Southeast Asia. And finally, Sergio Viera de Mello, who went on to become the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and later the UN administrator in Baghdad, where he died tragically when the UN headquarters were bombed.

In her biography of Sergio Samantha Power recounts how he and Lionel worked together to protect Montagnards in Cambodia. Power calls Lionel as “One of the Montagnards’ longstanding advocates in the United States”, and includes the text of a fax Sergio sent to him describing how Sergio convinced a group of Montagnards to end all hostile activities and become refugees, hoping for the chance to live in peace in the United States.

Dear Lionel,
Operation concluded! They were disarmed last night and this morning (144 weapons), dissolved as a political/military organization, and were relocated…The ball is in your court. Please help with expedited processing.  Sergio.

Power wrote that, “Pushed by Rosenblatt and other refugee advocates, President George H.W. Bush’s administration sent immigration officers to Cambodia in record speed.” Within six weeks all the Montagnards (238 men, 58 women and 102 children, according to Sergio’s account) had been resettled in North Carolina, the home state of Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who had taken a personal interest in this persecuted Christian group.

Sadly, I should add, the last President Bush showed no interest in helping the Montagnards, a group that Lionel and Refugees International continue to work to protect.

Refugees remember who helped them; I have had the thrill of seeing Lionel walk into rooms of resettled Montagnards Hmong, who greeted him with high-fives, hugs and a standing ovation.

For the last 40 years, refugees from Southeast Asia have had to remember only two names – Julia Taft and Lionel Rosenblatt. Please welcome Lionel to the podium.