Sonia Almassad, a Field Programme Officer from Syria, with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen is trying hard to make sure that UN relief aid reaches those who need it, in the war-torn country. She was earlier posted in her homeland, Syria, where she contracted with militant groups on both sides of the dispute, sometimes at high personal risk. You must have heard about many inspiring women and this is the story of a real-life hero delivering aid under fire.
A Real-Life Hero
You will be surprised that Almassad is the only woman working in the field area with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Yemen; she is supervising a team of five men and was based in Hudaydah, an influential aid center, during the first half of 2020.
Ms. Almassad reveals her account as part of the #RealLifeHeroes campaign, by OCHA, 0of this year’s World Humanitarian Day, on 19 August.
During the 2006 conflict between Lebanon and Israel, she accompanied the UN refugee agency, UNHCR as a volunteer, on the borders between Syria and Lebanon and she found how many families and kids were suffering from this dispute.
Then she joined the UN immigration agency, IOM to work with Iraqi refugees. It was an exceptional program, providing people a new opportunity and a new start, but when you learn their stories, they have wounds that will never heal. People who were abducted and tortured, women who were abused and who lost their kids. She was a member of the program which transferred some of the families to the USA, and it was great to see them starting their new lives.
When the situation in Syria got worst, she was with IOM as a field coordinator, traveling from area to area. She noticed people who were running from the ISIL militant group, who were living on the streets.
“I remember seeing a bleeding woman with a small baby, who was living on a cardboard box, and her family had no way to help her, Almassad said.”
Sonia Almassad, who is a Field Programme Officer from Syria, is now working with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, by UNOCHA. She reveals her story during her days in Yemen.
Reaching to the besieged area is not an easy job for her because it’s not easy to build their trust. And as a Syrian she had security concerns: she hides behind a male name, Mohamed, for her WhatsApp account because, as a team lead of the access unit, she needed to remain unknown.
She often tells people that she is a translator, working as a mediator when, in reality, she is the one doing the consulting. When she visits with a relief escort, everyone asks her about Mohamed. She would say that Mohamed was not feeling well, or out of the country. Every day Mohamed was absent!
When arranging entrance, you need to make sure that your team is protected. Though they can’t make it 100% secure, they do as much as they can and try to have guarantees from everyone at each level, including the Syrian Government, the US, and Russia, to make sure military actions would not take place during the escort. And also, you need to have some armed people, to make sure that no one is kidnapped.
When Almassad was on her first escort with OCHA in Syria in October 2016, they were moving to the city of Douma. They had been granted admittance guarantees but, as they entered the city, a dispute broke out between two armed groups and they attacked their team with mortars. They had to escape to an excavation, where they started talking to the deconfliction associates, the Russians, and Americans. The armed groups who had given them the guarantees sought to make it normal. They waited a few hours until the conflict was settled, and then offloaded the trucks.
This is the kind of work Almassad believes in and doing. She wants to do noble things for people. In Yemen, she negotiates for passage now beyond parts of the country. Being the only woman, and being a leader of the team, Almassad says she is having a moving experience.
