Voices from the Field - IRC Blog

“People [at the immigration detention center] told us that children were being punished for normal kid stuff—running around, making noise, tantrums. I have a two- and four-year-old at home, and I kept thinking, how would I manage in here keeping them under control?”

- Michelle Brané, director of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children’s detention and asylum program, speaking with The New Yorker for an article about the effects of U.S. detention policies on immigrant families.

“Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?”

- Angelina Jolie, actor and UNHCR Goodwill ambassador,  in an editorial in today’s Washington Post about the Iraqi refugee crisis. The International Rescue Committee honored Jolie and António Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, with the 2007 Freedom Award last November.

“Unless they are already outside of Iraq and have made their way through the refugee program on their own merits, it’s very, very difficult for us to unify families. It is going to be a long wait.”

- Susan Donovan, IRC;s resettlement director in Charlottesville, telling The Daily Progress about the difficulties Iraqi refugee families have staying together.

“These casualties are the result of civil war, lack of a stable government and the collision of warring factions, including Hutus from neighboring Rwanda.”

- Parade’s Intelligence Report, citing the IRC’s recent mortality survey in the Democratic Republic of Congo.