(LWI) - Allan Calma, Global Humanitarian Coordinator of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) humanitarian arm, World Service, was visiting another LWF country program when the most recent emergency broke out. Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, he was on a flight to Warsaw. For the past five months, Calma together with the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland (ECACP), an LWF member church, has set up a new humanitarian country program in Poland.
On the occasion of World Humanitarian Day, he talks about his motivation, what makes the refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine unique, and about the silent heroes in many emergencies.
How much time did you have to prepare for your current mission in Poland?
I was pulled out of a mission in South Sudan when the Russian military invaded Ukraine. So basically, I came back to Geneva in the morning to get another set of clothes, and in the afternoon, I flew to Warsaw. It was a change from 48 degrees to –3 in one day.
Is this emergency different from the ones you have seen in the past?
Yes, very much so. I think this emergency has continued to challenge humanitarians in rethinking how to effectively help displaced people. For one, here in Poland and many European countries, the host government has given refugees the right to work and has even taken them into their social services.
As humanitarians, we have always highlighted these two issues as the main challenges to a successful refugee response. Now we can finally show how much we can do if we have this kind of support from the host government.
What is easy, what is challenging?
It is easy to fall in love with Poland and its people. What I like the most is meeting the people we seek to assist – it is hard hearing their stories, how they fled, how they left behind their lives, but it is also good to hear their stories of resilience. Particularly for this assignment, I really appreciated how locally-led this response has been. How the humanitarian arm of LWF, World Service, has been working hand in hand with our member church (ECACP) and its parishes across Poland.
The challenge is to navigate through competing and sometimes even conflicting strategies and approaches of humanitarian actors. On the one hand, we need new ways of doing things, as the context in this emergency is quite different from others we have dealt with, on the other, we need to be able to apply learning from previous emergencies.
Can you give an example?
The refugees from Ukraine are very mobile, and they have been free to move around Europe. Also, Poland is a stable country with a robust economy. Usually, in a refugee crisis, the first thing we need to provide is food and basic relief goods, but that was not so necessary in this context. Of course, we had places where we distributed food and water, like border crossings, train stations, and transit areas, but the refugees would only take what they needed at the moment and move on. Multipurpose cash assistance is definitely the most appropriate way to help in this situation. We have a lot of experience with this kind of aid already but need to make sure we coordinate well with other aid agencies, to avoid duplication.
