Farshad Regestar has been the chief executive of Relief International (RI) for 13 years. From the organisation's Los angeles headquarters he spoke to Megan Tady about how the relief world was affected by the September 11 attacks in the United States and how Relief International will continue to promote peaceful co-existence in spite of this setback.
AN: What is the background of Relief International?
FR: We are about eleven years old and we have evolved over time. We started with medical programmes and then we gradually added on other sectors. We are staunchly non-religious in that we do not combine aid with any other agenda and included in our staff are people of various faiths. We define ourselves as a place for relief professionals to come up with creative solutions. We try to have a very non-corporate culture and we encourage our field staff to come up with solutions on the ground, using international standards and guidelines. Also, as part of the relief to development continuation, we staunchly emphasise capacity building from day one. RI includes as part of capacity development a specific management structure. RI empowers national staff by having three types of staffing. Most agencies have a two-tiered distinction between international staff and local staff. We have international staff, a national officer corps, and national support staff.
So we treat our national officer corps as professionals equal to international staff who happen to be from the host population. These are professionals who have the same level of expertise as our international staff, but perhaps just don't have the same level of international experience. Their contracts are held with HQ rather than the field offices and therefore they develop a stronger sense of ownership of programs and a sense of belonging to the organisation.
AN: What is the focus of Relief International?
FR: Our focus is the transition from relief to development. Our programmes are transitional programmes. We specialise in bridging relief and development. Our methodology is cross-sectoral programming, which we find is one key to bridging relief and development. That includes health, shelter food, education and income generation. The rational is we treat the situation as the problem, rather than focusing on a specific symptom. So, if you're providing medical assistance to a refugee population, but they don't have shelter, we keep going back to ground zero. Even if we don't provide the shelter ourselves, we make sure that somebody else does. The idea is to look at the situation from a holistic perspective.
AN: Why is it important to bridge the gap between relief and development?
FR: Often that is overlooked. So one reason for transitional programming is just that there is such a gap. And two, there's an opportunity of using the context of disasters and the changing social structures that result in this context to create positive developmental change. So there is both the challenge and the opportunity.
AN: What has been your response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?
FR: In the first few days we released some funding to the volunteer groups in Ground Zero. We have been procuring items for rescue workers, from socks to work gloves and more advanced masks. In the second phase, we have started a fund that is to be used for a scholarship fund for the children of families of survivors.
AN: How has this disaster affected the relief world?
FR: Clearly the world has totally changed. I'm not quite sure what the impact is for the relief community. But one thing is for sure-for the US, there will not be as much international assistance. People have become much more aware of the global and integrated linkages now. I think the disaster touched a raw nerve of humanity. It is not just an American experience. I think that Americans also see that other countries see this as not just an American problem. Everybody shares in seeing this as an act on a very deep, personal level. But my guess is that the financial resources for international aid will just not be available at the same levels as in the past decade.
AN: Do you currently have any programmes in the Middle East?
FR: We do in Iran. Just about two weeks ago we started a programme in response to the floods in the Golestan province where 400 people were killed. We have already started construction work on family houses that were destroyed.
AN: How will this disaster affect your work in Iran?
FR: I have no doubt that this will bring the U.S. and Iran closer together and will encourage a more open attitude on both sides to work closely on humanitarian issues, including the 2.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran. For the last 20 years the Afghan refugees in Iran have not received much assistance from the U.S.
AN: Are you concerned with the effects that action from the U.S. might have on Afghanistan?
FR: I'm sure that, like any other conflict situation, there will be refugees. In terms of any comments on action, we obviously hope that the action will be focused on the appropriate targets, not the innocent civilians. Even then, if an operation was so surgical, I think there is still no doubt that the Afghan public will have deep concern. But on the other hand, I'm quite sure that the U.S. government will be, as they have been in the past, very generous with ensuring humanitarian assistance.
AN: You try to promote the peaceful co-existence of countries. Does this disaster set you back?
FR: That's a tough question. For some time we have been pointing out in policy circles that the humanitarian situation that we face structurally, is crystallised by the line that divides Islamic societies and non-Islamic societies. If you look at the arch from Indonesia down to Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, there's the map of the majority of active or chronic conflicts in the world and where you have the world's largest concentration of refugees. We see the refugee issue not in religious terms but as rooted in social, economic and at times cultural clashes that are based on longer demographic trends and also on policies that may have been short-sighted.
AN: What programmes are you currently focusing on?
FR: One of our biggest projects is an integrated resettlement program. Our flagship project is Azerbaijan. We have built over 40 resettlement villages. RI has targeted those settlements of the refugee populations that are in contention between the two sides of the conflict, as refugees from these areas may not be going back for generations. There are about 750,000 refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) combined in Azerbaijan. So we looked at the map and said, the Armenians are going to want to hold on to the territory that connects the two Armenias with Nagorno-Karabakh. Any peaceful resolution to this conflict may be 20 to 30 years from now, so let's build something a bit more permanent and decent for those 200,000 refugees who are from this area. Maybe the other 500,000 will go back to their land in the next few years. But we know that this population of 200,000 will not be going back for the next 30 years. That's an example of looking at a problem in totality, rather than just a sector. Here we are looking at a broader and global context of the problem. So RI has built resettlement villages. Here we have done careful studies in trying to constitute villages together. We pull these people out of refugee camps to create these new villages. We build a minimum one-room structure, latrines, common bathing facilities, clinics, schools, community centres. On top of that, we provide each settlement with a revolving loan fund that helps refugees start businesses. So they are out of the refugee camp, they are going to school. We've done some impact studies that clearly show the refugees' income levels go up by 400 percent. Refugee children school attendance jumps from 60 percent, to a rate of 97 percent.ere we are looking at a broader and global context of the problem. So RI has built resettlement villages. Here we have done careful studies in trying to constitute villages together. We pull these people out of refugee camps to create these new villages. We build a minimum one-room structure, latrines, common bathing facilities, clinics, schools, community centres. On top of that, we provide each settlement with a revolving loan fund that helps refugees start businesses. So they are out of the refugee camp, they are going to school. We've done some impact studies that clearly show the refugees' income levels go up by 400 percent. Refugee children school attendance jumps from 60 percent, to a rate of 97 percent.ere we are looking at a broader and global context of the problem. So RI has built resettlement villages. Here we have done careful studies in trying to constitute villages together. We pull these people out of refugee camps to create these new villages. We build a minimum one-room structure, latrines, common bathing facilities, clinics, schools, community centres. On top of that, we provide each settlement with a revolving loan fund that helps refugees start businesses. So they are out of the refugee camp, they are going to school. We've done some impact studies that clearly show the refugees' income levels go up by 400 percent. Refugee children school attendance jumps from 60 percent, to a rate of 97 percent.ere we are looking at a broader and global context of the problem. So RI has built resettlement villages. Here we have done careful studies in trying to constitute villages together. We pull these people out of refugee camps to create these new villages. We build a minimum one-room structure, latrines, common bathing facilities, clinics, schools, community centres. On top of that, we provide each settlement with a revolving loan fund that helps refugees start businesses. So they are out of the refugee camp, they are going to school. We've done some impact studies that clearly show the refugees' income levels go up by 400 percent. Refugee children school attendance jumps from 60 percent, to a rate of 97 percent.common bathing facilities, clinics, schools, community centres. On top of that, we provide each settlement with a revolving loan fund that helps refugees start businesses. So they are out of the refugee camp, they are going to school. We've done some impact studies that clearly show the refugees' income levels go up by 400 percent. Refugee children school attendance jumps from 60 percent, to a rate of 97 percent.
Women are freed up to go to the market -- all kinds of social indicators, even assimilation. There are more marriages, more social interaction with the local host population. It's all the kinds of things that help move refugees away from dependency to self-reliance.
AN: What are the criteria you follow in choosing who you help?
FR: We choose the most vulnerable populations, depending on the specific problem. If they have a shelter problem, we will help those who have more children, and the elderly and such. If we're implementing an educational programme, we're obviously more focused on kids. If we are doing a food programme, we're looking at different populations to see who doesn't have food. We define ourselves as pro-poor. For example, in our income generation programmes our average loans are in the $200 range. So, our programmes are focused on the poor in general and we coordinate with other agencies to ensure maximum impact.
AN: How is your approach to eradicating human suffering unique?
FR: I think that in our focus on transitional programming, RI is somewhat unique. In my experience talking to other organisations, I think that our management structure, with the three types of management, is unique. Obviously in the cross-sector programming, we aren't as unique. But I think we pay more attention to things being integrated and try to look at the problem holistically, by examining the political and sociological and other dimensions of the problem to reach a more durable solution
An Armenian family looks from their house in the town of Agdam, controlled by Nagorno Karabakh, and which was completely destroyed during fighting between Karabakh and Azerbaijan forces in 1990s, October ...
