“Those benefitting most from the renewal of this longstanding relationship with PRM are the refugees themselves,” expressed Linda Samardzic, Director of the OPE.

ICMC directly assists refugees in need of resettlement through the Overseas Processing Entity (OPE) in Istanbul, Turkey, by preparing cases for presentation to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and facilitating all pre-departure processes including cultural orientation sessions, medical examinations and follow-up. A sub-office in Beirut further supports this work, and mobile teams process refugees in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Since the 1980s, all of this work has been carried out in partnership with the US State Department, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), with whom ICMC has recently renewed its contract for the coming three years. Resettlement efforts continue to focus on ensuring protection for the most vulnerable refugees, including especially unaccompanied children, women at-risk, and those with serious health concerns.

In one such case this month, ICMC staff found themselves faced with a situation in which a refugee scheduled for imminent departure to the US would not be cleared for travel without receiving a blood transfer. “She was scheduled to leave at 5am the next morning”, recalls ICMC Head of Resettlement Meliha Hasanbegovic-Guso. “Very few hospitals have a blood bank, and it was too late in the afternoon to find and purchase blood for the needed transfer. I did the only thing I could; I did a sweep of the office and asked our staff for volunteers to donate blood.”

Volunteers were in no short supply, and at 17:30 the hospital confirmed that the blood donated by two ICMC staff could be used for the transfer. Thanks to them, the woman was able to depart to the United States as scheduled, where she can begin rebuilding her life.

ICMC continues to grow and adapt to the ever-changing refugee resettlement terrain and adhere to U.S. government policies and procedures, while remaining committed to its rights-based, refugee-centered approach in its processing work.