Personal stories

Before becom­ing a JPO, I stud­ied polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na and inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol. After my stud­ies, I com­plet­ed intern­ships at Luxembourg’s Min­istry of For­eign and Euro­pean Affairs, in Unit­ed Nations agen­cies and NGOs. These expe­ri­ences led me to my first job with the NGOCar­i­tas as an advi­sor for asy­lum seek­ers and refugees, includ­ing unac­com­pa­nied minors, in Austria.

Two years lat­er, I start­ed work­ing as a JPO for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Lebanon in the area of edu­ca­tion, work­ing on pro­grammes to ensure that Syr­i­an refugee chil­dren were enrolled in pri­ma­ry school and stayed there. After two years in Lebanon, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be deployed to Niger, where I have been work­ing for UNHCR since Feb­ru­ary 2021. In my day-to-day work, I assess the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of vul­ner­a­ble refugees for reset­tle­ment and coor­di­nate infor­ma­tion and case man­age­ment with the field, reset­tle­ment coun­tries, the IOM and oth­er stake­hold­ers to ensure a smooth reset­tle­ment process, from iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to the sub­mis­sion for depar­ture of refugees to reset­tle­ment coun­tries in Europe and North America.

I have learned a lot since first start­ing work as a JPO, espe­cial­ly in Niger, where my work is very prac­ti­cal, spe­cif­ic and prag­mat­ic. The results of my con­tri­bu­tions are very tan­gi­ble and have a direct impact both on the lives of refugees and on UNHCR’s reset­tle­ment inter­ven­tion in Niger. UNHCR’s oper­a­tion in Niger is also spe­cial because I work not only with refugees who have entered Niger on their own but also with asy­lum seek­ers evac­u­at­ed by UNHCR from Libya to Niger through the Emer­gency Tran­sit Mech­a­nism (ETM). These asy­lum seek­ers, the vast major­i­ty of whom are eli­gi­ble for refugee sta­tus, are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble because of the long peri­ods of arbi­trary deten­tion and inhu­man and degrad­ing treat­ment which they have suf­fered in Libya.

My expe­ri­ences in Lebanon and Niger have allowed me to bet­ter under­stand the area of pro­tec­tion in human­i­tar­i­an action and the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and needs of forcibly dis­placed peo­ple, and have strength­ened my desire to con­tin­ue work­ing in this area.

Before becom­ing a Junior Tech­ni­cal Assis­tant (JTA) at LuxDev’s Region­al Office in Sene­gal, I stud­ied polit­i­cal eco­nom­ics and com­plet­ed a master’s in eco­nom­ics and envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy. By apply­ing to the JTA pro­gramme, I hoped in par­tic­u­lar to dis­cov­er a new pro­fes­sion­al field as well as a dif­fer­ent coun­try and cul­ture to any I had expe­ri­enced pre­vi­ous­ly. Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, I want­ed to dis­cov­er and have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion sec­tor and the inter­na­tion­al dynam­ics involved. Per­son­al­ly, since I had not vis­it­ed the African con­ti­nent before, I hoped to gain a bet­ter knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of African val­ues and traditions.

Cur­rent­ly in the LuxDev Region­al Office in Dakar, I am work­ing on the mon­i­tor­ing of projects and pro­grammes, the cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the fourth Indica­tive Coop­er­a­tion Pro­gramme (ICPIV), the for­mu­la­tion of the new SEN/301 pro­gramme, the draft­ing and imple­men­ta­tion of the CSR plan and LuxDev’s insti­tu­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I also sup­port the office on gen­der and envi­ron­ment issues.

Dur­ing my expe­ri­ence as a JTA, there have been sev­er­al high­lights, espe­cial­ly dur­ing field mis­sions and meet­ings with final ben­e­fi­cia­ries. These have been impor­tant in help­ing me bet­ter under­stand the activ­i­ties of the projects, how devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion func­tions and what the sit­u­a­tion is real­ly like on the ground.

In this con­text, I have par­tic­u­lar­ly strong mem­o­ries from my first mis­sion to col­lect per­son­al sto­ries. I went with Anna, a fel­low JTA, to the north­ern and cen­tral areas to meet ben­e­fi­cia­ries of two voca­tion­al train­ing and health pro­grammes. One of our inter­views was with a per­son who had ben­e­fit­ed from the Saint-Louis emer­gency med­ical assis­tance ser­vices. Anoth­er was with a young 27-year-old entre­pre­neur, who had ben­e­fit­ed from a loan after his train­ing that had enabled him to invest in land, which he uses for hor­ti­cul­ture thanks to Luxembourg’s devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion with AJIR Niom­bato and the Union of Com­mu­ni­ty Mutu­al Sav­ings and Cred­it Institutions.

What has inspired me and helped me to car­ry out the tasks giv­en to me has been the patience of the Sene­galese, who have a dif­fer­ent con­cep­tion of time from peo­ple in Lux­em­bourg, for exam­ple. Time is seen more broad­ly and what mat­ters most of all is today and the next day, ​“Inshal­lah”. This has led me to see time in a more relaxed way and not to be frus­trat­ed when things don’t go to plan. This is just one aspect among the many things I’ve learned about Sene­gal and West Africa dur­ing my first year as a JTA, and which con­tin­ue to be sources of inspiration.