Sasha Chanoff recalls the day he was forced to make one of the most painful decisions of his life. It was , only six years after the genocide in Rwanda , and Chanoff — a Finnish-born Jew working with the International Organization for Migration — was sent to neighboring Congo on a risky mission: drive to a safe haven about an hour from Kinshasa, the capital, and gather ethnic Tutsi refugees onto the last available evacuation flight out of the country.
The job was especially dangerous because Laurent Kabila, who recently had taken power in Congo, had declared that all Tutsis were enemies to be hunted down and exterminated. But upon arrival, he and a colleague were introduced to an additional 32 widows and orphans, all of whom appeared emaciated and traumatized by what they had been through.
Sasha Chanoff, third from right, with Congolese war refugees seeking safety in Nairobi, Kenya, in Traveling by bus under armed escort, the group arrived at the Kinshasa airport and waited as Congolese immigration officials checked their documents. It appeared that the officials would stop them from boarding the plane, but they finally were allowed to take off for a refugee camp in Cameroon, and from there to the United States. Originally designed to provide lifesaving care to refugees who fall through the cracks of assistance there, RefugePoint has grown into a global organization that has helped more than , refugees access resettlement, self-reliance opportunities and other pathways to safety.
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