One among the thousands Bernadette came into the research office today to ask if any of the interns could do an intake interview. The other two looked less than enthusiastic, so I volunteered. I met a tiny woman in her 30's, dressed in a bright print dress and headscarf. Her name was J*. She was Congolese. She spoke very little English, so another refugee translated as she told me her story. J was a university student in Congo and she participated in some peace demonstrations. Somehow the police got her name, and she had to hide. Then her family in the countryside was attacked: her sister was raped, and her brother was beaten so severely he developed a seizure disorder. This may have been collected to her political activity, or it may have just been a random attack by one of the DRC's many warring rebel factions. She fled to Uganda with her brothers and sisters and was sent to a refugee camp. At the camp she worked her plot of land like the other refugees. Last year she developed fibroids in her uterus. She was sent to Kampala where they told her she'd have to have her uterus removed. She refused because she wanted to have children some day. They removed only the fibroids, and she was sent back to the refugee camp after only a week. She was still recovering from the surgery and couldn't work to grow her own food. The only food they gave her to eat at the camp was maize flour, which she said upset her stomach. She became extremely ill and weak and came down with malaria. She went to the camp clinic where she languished: the doctor was in Kampala and nobody was looking after her. Other refugees found her there, and they took her to Kampala to get help from Inter-Aid (UNHCR's implementing partner in Kampala and responsible for providing services to urban refugees including healthcare) but their clinic was closed for the Christmas holidays. Finally she got help in January. But in March she developed severe pain in her uterus again. She went to Inter-Aid where the doctor said there was nothing wrong with her, and diagnosed her with a mental illness that caused her to invent her symptoms. He instructed her to return to the camp. She didn't believe him, and went back to her original doctor and to Mulago hospital. There she got a sonogram which revealed that the fibroids were back and she needed to have another surgery, this time to remove the entire uterus. She came to RLP because she is afraid of having surgery again if she is going to recieve the same shoddy post-operative care. She says she almost died last time, and she's terrified. She is reluctant to put her life in the hands of people she didn't trust, and who had almost let her die once before. I took down her story and her details, and typed it up for Bernadette. I have no idea whether RLP can help her. She doesn't have a "case" in the traditional legal sense. But our advocacy rarely goes through traditional channels. I know we often advocate for particular clients with Inter-Aid and UNHCR, trying to pressure them into providing the services they are legally supposed to be providing. They comply not because they are frightened of being brought into court, but because actually providing the service becomes less trouble than having to come up with creative reasons for denying it. Sounds pretty cynical, but I don't think it's inaccurate. They are under a lot of pressure to keep to a budget (despite the fact that human need does not politely conform itself to funding priorities), and to be working toward an ultimate "solution" to the refugee "problem": get refugees back home. Providing them with too much care is not going to encourage that. Never mind that they are fleeing very real violence that does not show signs of abating any time soon. Never mind that since goverments have committed to protect them, they are actually entitled to recieve a certain extremely basic level of support and assistance. We wouldn't want them to get too comfortable and forget that they are beholden.

J's story isn't really all that bad. She got refuge, land to farm (never mind that she was a student and had never picked up a hoe in her life before fleeing Congo), and (some) medical care. This is not a case of clear-cut injustice. Instead, it's a about a woman who used to have control over her life and her destiny who is now totally dependent on the whims of a huge and ineffective international beurocracy. I don't know what will happen to J, or what a "happy ending" would look like for her and her family. But I hope she finds it.

*Name and some details changed.  ¶ 1:31 PM