An Interview with Cindy Issac

“What’s interesting about The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, is that it’s not just about gender, it’s also about the dynamics of class, and it shows this cautionary reality check in terms of taking such a black and white view of situations, and resolution of situations that we’re seeing today, and that’s polarization again. It shows that even within these movements, you have people who understand that the original goals or gains have been distorted, and there’s a need to open up and re-think. I do think that in itself offers an opportunity for us to engage with the world that’s not black and white,” says Cindy Issac, who just left Yemen to take up the Deputy Head of office with the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Somalia. She has also worked in Palestine, Sudan, Afghanistan and Jordan.

How did you end up in the humanitarian aid sector?

When I finished my master’s degree, I looked at postings overseas and ended up doing an internship in Palestine focused on gender mainstreaming. My next job was my very first humanitarian job with a local NGO working with refugees from the Horn of Africa in Yemen. This set off my humanitarian focused career.

What wakes you up every day and keeps you going?

I absolutely love my job, my very different jobs with OCHA, Non Government Organisations (NGOs) and other UN organisations. I’d like to do good work. I have this desire to do good for myself and for those around me. I feel a sense of immediacy with regard to the humanitarian work that we do, and when I wake up, even though not always, I have a sense of the things that I can potentially do and achieve. This is what really keeps me going.

How would you define a humanitarian crisis?

Formally, it’s a series of events man made or natural, internal or external that cause some sort of a threat hazard to the overall security or wellbeing of a population. They can be immediate like a natural disaster or hurricane or cyclone or could be slow onset disasters such as in many conflicts that we see today.

What was a typical day like for you in Yemen?

I wish I could say my typical day was so exciting. I tend to wake up relatively early and go straight into my emails to see what I need to respond to. Part of the reason why Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world is because there are so many different elements and aspects that need a quick response. My focus is to be up to speed and to respond with immediate effect. In the office, it’s really trouble shooting and working with my team but I also attend numerous meetings. What makes it fun though is when I get to go to the field, and I’ve been lucky as am able to go to the field on a regular basis to visit sites of the internally displaced people, and meet with our partners who are the first responders. I engage with them about the challenges, gaps and bottlenecks they face, and follow up at the national level by identifying ways to unblock them.

How does this conflict impact people on a day to day basis?

Yemen has always had, relatively speaking, poor development indicators and what the conflict has done is exacerbated an already difficult situation. What I’ve particularly seen are the stark challenges for the population in terms of freedom of movement. Due to the conflict, there are limitations where people can go both in Yemen but also being able to fly out of Sana’a airport because of the air blockade. The war has taken a toll on the economy, the impact on the currency fluctuation, the lack of employment and jobs, and the overall challenges associated with livelihoods for the average Yemeni. It’s quite extraordinarily difficult to see and the impact it is having on the daily lives of Yemenis.

What are the drivers of this conflict?

What’s interesting about this conflict is that it shouldn’t be a conflict given the nature of what’s happening on the ground. Political shifts have taken place, specific parties have taken over parts of the country, and external influences associated with all of this. These were followed by certain allegiances and alignments within the Yemeni political parties and the failure of the national dialogue towards peace. All this created a political crisis which turned into a humanitarian crisis and the only way to really resolve this is through some agreed peace dividends. 

What in your view could be done to stop the conflict?

This really sounds so simplistic, but it’s really peace, and in my opinion in Yemen, peace is feasible if we can bring all the parties to the table. Although there are significant external influences, it is an internal conflict. So if we can bring Yemenis to the table and find some sort of negotiated settlement, which would include power sharing arrangements, I do think that this conflict could end.

Working in Yemen where despite concerted effort to resolve this conflict, it just seems to go and on and on, how do you cope with that? 

It’s very frustrating especially as it’s a conflict that shouldn’t be a conflict, it’s not clear why the fighting continues. In terms of coping strategies, what’s helped is the community engagement, having that opportunity to engage directly with Yemenis who for the most part want the conflict to stop. They want to go back to pre-war times and look at how to further develop Yemen. What drives me, what keeps me going is that sense of hope that does exist in Yemen which I don’t see in other contexts, and there’s a level of resilience, and hope towards peace that many Yemenis have expressed to me and their belief still that it’ll come.

Can stories, fiction help with advocacy to resolve the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises?

Well I don’t think it’d hurt and I think it’s a really cool idea as it helps to set the scene to advocate in a really unique way, in a creative way, for parts of the population that are less engaged on what we’d say the nonfiction side of things, the political side of things, so yes I don’t think it hurts. I actually think it’s a fantastic way to broaden our advocacy efforts in a creative and unique way.

Have you read a fiction story or book that was set in a humanitarian crisis?

I did have the opportunity to read Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. It’s not directly related to humanitarian crises, but interestingly it reminded me of parts of Yemen. It was a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale and shows how a society can easily shift and be swayed into what’s quite a conservative and dogmatic approach to life. Interestingly, enough I see that now, this extremism, polarization, which I believe is exacerbating humanitarian crises and this book particularly resonated with me.  If we’re not careful, this is where we’re going towards, and we already are in some contexts including in parts of Yemen. 

What elements about The Testaments in your view could actually help us to raise awareness?

There’s the gender dynamics, but what’s interesting about the book is that it’s not just about gender, it’s also about the dynamics of class, and it shows this cautionary reality check in terms of taking such a black and white view of situations, and resolution of situations that we’re seeing today, and that’s polarization again. It shows that even within these movements, you have people who understand that the original goals or gains have been distorted, and there’s a need to open up and re-think. I do think that in itself offers an opportunity for us to engage with the world that’s not black and white.

Tell me about the characters in that book that have stayed with, you connected with and why.

There’s one character, Aunty Lydia the antagonist in The Handmaid’s Tale who becomes the protagonist in The Testaments. For me she’s this interesting character who as a female is technically subjugated to this societal dogmatic restriction, but she’s also a woman of power. Because of the nature of what she took and what she became in The Handmaid’s Tale and what’s interesting in The Testaments is how as a senior member of the society she takes on a protagonist role of leaking information in order to open up. She understands that the ideology is gone, is no longer beneficial for the society as a whole, and it needs to be opened up. Her character I think is an interesting one because she shows that there are in any extreme situation those people that you can engage with and she offers that gray that needs to be unpacked in terms of what we do, and how we do things, and how we look at crises, but also how we look at their resolution at the political level. 

I can see how these characters were basically dislocated from their day to day lives and how that impacts them, and this in the development world. I can see how we can really juxtapose that with when a conflict happens, and how that pretty much dislocates peoples’ lives.

You have the dynamics of gender but you have the dynamics of class as well, and what’s interesting is the book’s richness of the different characters and their roles and where they sit within that society, and how that plays out, which is quite interesting as well the depth. The other thing too is how we engage; do we look at people from a status basis or do we look at them from a vulnerability basis?

Anything else you’d like to talk about The Testament?

I just recommend to read it, and I know it might be unique in terms of the choice of looking at humanitarian crises. I’d like to highlight again why I’ve spoken about this book. I think it has a digestible way of looking at the causes of humanitarian crises. We tend to look at humanitarian crises in terms of the end, the result, the displacement, the need for basic services, and so on, but what caused this in the first place?  When we look at the nature of the big large emergencies that we’re working on, they’re conflict based, and why are they conflict based, what brought us there is usually a political and/or socio-economic crisis.

Tell me about a person or a situation you have encountered in your work that has had a profound effect on you. 

When I was in Afghanistan as the Senior Human Rights Officer working on child protection, there were a group of children that were in the maximum-security prison, the infamous Bagram that used to be run by the Americans and was taken over by the Afghans. With my very small team, we managed to advocate for the children (and there were children as young as ten) to be transferred out of this prison into juvenile detention centers or rehabilitation centers in Kabul.

To this day, the impact was just huge. We were a small team and we just kept harping and harping and pushing even internally within the UN system that these children were not terrorists, that we needed to look at them as underage minors, and we were able to get them out of that prison. That to me was very profound in the sense of changing a viewpoint of a certain population group, and then effectively being able to ensure a more human approach to the children’s rehabilitation based on what was national Afghan law. It was one of the more positive examples of being able to push and advocate internally with the Afghans, within the UN, with donors and member states on the importance of this issue.

What has been your toughest moment?

There’s been a few. In general, the toughest thing for me is when you really know that you cannot make a difference, you cannot change a situation. The most recent example was just before I left Yemen. I mentioned that there’s an air blockade. The United Nations Special Envoy organized medical evacuations with the World Health Organization and the Humanitarian Coordinator, and there was this family, what I understood afterwards which I didn’t know at the time, the youngest son had to be medically evacuated due to a critical stage of diabetes. I was sitting there because I was supposed to be on the same flight and it was interesting because as we were getting ready to go through security, national security came, and basically stopped them from travelling. I remember thinking to myself, here I am going on this plane where I don’t really have to go as am just doing a field visit to Aden while this family is trying to get to Amman for medical treatment, and is being stopped for whatever reason and I felt so helpless because you know, it shouldn’t happen. 

What is your greatest hope for the people affected by humanitarian crises? 

It’s not just those who are affected by humanitarian crises. For me it’s a shift in how we view ourselves, and how we view the world. I’d love to leave this world in a place where we break down barriers and accept diversity. These conflicts are due to misunderstandings, political decisions, dogmatic views, and what causes that? For me, it’s about breaking down all of this, and really building a world that accepts differences is what I’d love to see, at least it’s my hope.

 What one action can people out there reading or listening to this interview take do help address the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises?

For me it’s about being aware and informed. It’s really thinking beyond your borders and whatever those borders are. It could be your community, your neighborhood, your country and thinking beyond those borders however you define them, and also beyond your lifetime in terms of the choices you make, that’s the other thing too. A lot of crises are due to this immediacy of want, and if we can think beyond ourselves, and the choices that we make that affect us in our lifetime. I believe this would help to prevent specific humanitarian crises.

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