Suwedi Yunus Abdallah is a child protection expert in Uganda

19 September 2013, Geneva (ICMC) – Suwedi, a Tanzanian educated in India and Britain, is ICMC's child protection specialist working today for UNHCR in Kampala, Uganda.

Inspired by his father’s international career as a diplomat, Suwedi’s ambition, ever since he was in his twenties, has been to work for the United Nations. To realize it, Suwedi intends to learn as much as possible by working daily in direct contact with people in need. Himself a father of three children, he is particularly keen on protecting the rights of refugee children and helping them to find a solution to their plight.

After studying social sciences at Agra University in India, Suwedi moved to London and received training in Immigration and Nationality Law, recognised by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) in the United Kingdom. In the meantime he was volunteering with various charitable organizations, social services while working for other organizations that assist migrants, refugees, and British nationals.

After several years of working as an accredited immigration advisor and Resettlement Officer for various organizations and serving as an immigration advisor for university students in the U.K., Suwedi decided to devote himself to refugees overseas. Between 2006 and 2008, he spent two years in Tanzania as a national United Nations Volunteer (UNV) working on protection of child rights and conducting best interest determinations (BIDs).

In 2010, via the UNHCR-ICMC Resettlement-Deployment Scheme, he moved to Damascus, Syria, where he interviewed Iraqi refugees applying for resettlement.

Since 2011, Suwedi has been deployed to Uganda as the ICMC-UNHCR child protection expert, whereby he interviews children of various nationalities. Many of the refugee children with whom Suwedi works have fled the violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Suwedi also trains UNHCR staff members and partners on child protection and the conduction of best interest determinations in remote areas of the country to ensure tha unaccompanied and separated children are properly considered within UNHCR’s Ugandan operations. As a child protection specialist Suwedi assists separated children and unaccompanied minors, tracing their families and determining how they can best be assisted.

In addition to improving data collection and training implementing partners on the ground, Suwedi strives to instil hope in children broken by separation, loss and disillusionment.

Suwedi's leit motiv, wherever he meets refugee children, is that each one of them can build a better life if properly listened to and given the chance.

-- by Carolina Prandelli/lb

 Photocredit © ICMC/ C.Van de Voorde / July 2013