Skip to main content
q&a

When Catherine Shin, a Vancouverite, goes to work, her challenges include negotiating peace between rival forces, helping resettle refugees and staving off genocide.Chris Taylor/Reuters

Next time you complain about your workplace – the bad coffee or the annoying co-workers – spare a sympathetic thought for Catherine Shin.

When the Vancouverite goes to work, her challenges are a little more monumental: negotiating peace between rival forces, helping resettle refugees, staving off genocide.

Ms. Shin works for the United Nations. When the UN has a seemingly insurmountable problem somewhere on the planet – and there are many – Ms. Shin is one of the key people they drop in, to try to make sense of the chaos.

Her current stop: South Sudan.

Reached in Luxembourg before she headed to South Sudan for her new posting, Ms. Shin sat down to talk about her critical work at flashpoints around the globe – and how world events are never as far away as they might seem.

The situation has become dire in South Sudan. What will you be doing there?

I'll be senior political affairs officer, so I'll be joining the peacekeeping mission there in the capital of Juba. I might be there a few months, or a year, or two years. I just don't know. To say that it will be challenging is an understatement.

What's the situation there right now?

It's a new country, and there were such high hopes for it. Almost everyone voted for independence in 2011, but almost immediately the infighting started. Right now it's one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Civilians are being targeted, children are being burned alive. All the infrastructure we take for granted in other countries – schools, clinics, hospitals – they're all gone. The population is starving. So it will be one of the most challenging environments I have faced, and hopefully I'm ready for it.

What's the worst-case scenario?

If the conflict intensifies, it could very well lead to a Rwanda-type catastrophe of all-out ethnic warfare. That's the type of destruction we have been mandated to try and prevent. There is a real concern that could happen.

How did you get started in this line of work?

Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs sponsored a youth program, and I was placed as an assistant to the head of the UN in Cambodia. There we focused on development issues like poverty, and dealing with the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. I ended up staying 3 1/2 years.

Then, I shifted to working with the refugee agency and was sent to the border region of Myanmar. That was a protracted refugee situation, with people who had lived in camps for 20 years. There were whole generations of kids who grew up in those camps and weren't allowed to integrate into Thai society. It was a hopeless situation for them, and so we worked on resettling them to other countries.

Then, when the Arab Spring broke out, I was sent to the border region of Egypt, because refugees were flowing in from Libya. At that point, I was hired by the UN envoy to Yemen to work with him, because the country was on the brink of civil war.

After Yemen, you took some time off. So why did you decide to get involved in the UN again?

I really questioned whether I should go back to this kind of work. I was definitely burned out. In places like that, you are working 20 hours a day, with countries on the brink of war. So you work at a tremendous pace. It's fight-or-flight.

I don't know why, but finally I thought I was ready to be part of a mission again. So I said yes – and then doubted that decision for a full month.

What are you hoping to achieve in South Sudan?

In theory, we will be able to hammer out agreements and come up with strategies to support peace. Our biggest mandate is to protect civilians, who are being targeted in increasing numbers. If we need to focus on anything right now, it's that.

When you are working abroad, what do you miss most about Canada?

It is always weird when I come back. I have a hard time functioning on multiple levels. But what hits me the most, when I step out of the Vancouver airport, is the air. Just the freedom to breathe clean air.

What do you want Canadians to know about your work abroad?

People might think that these conflicts are so far away, and have very little to do with our lives. But if something happens in Syria, it's not an isolated situation. We're all connected – and it affects all of us eventually.

This interview has been edited and condensed

Interact with The Globe