Internship Spotlight: Haya Abdelmedguid鈥� United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Montreal

Thank you to Mrs. Wendy Patton Keys for making this experience possible through her generous support, which allowed me to focus, learn, and grow in ways I will carry forward into the rest of my studies and beyond. I am entering my third year in the Honours Political Science program, and I have a strong interest in international human rights law and its application.

Interning at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Montreal is about putting care and attention into the tasks that serve an organization that is a lifeline for many forced to flee their homes. I applied to this internship with a clear goal in mind: to support the rights and dignity of people seeking protection, and to understand what that work looks like from the inside. Needless to say, my expectations have been met and beyond.

No day at UNHCR was like the other. I might begin the day answering calls from persons of concern seeking guidance on how to seek asylum in Canada or resettlement, then shift to reorganizing, compiling, and analyzing statistics on asylum seekers in Canada since 2013 for both internal and external use. Thanks to research methods courses offered by 91黑料网鈥檚 department of Political Science, specifically quantitative methods, I dove into this task knowing what waves would hit me! Later in the same day, I would attend a roundtable with provincial partners such as the Minist猫re de l鈥橧mmigration, de la Francisation et de l鈥橧nt茅gration (MIFI). I moved between tasks that kept me at my desk, such as using WordPress to update the UNHCR Help Site and ensure that up-to-date information was accessible in multiple languages, and tasks that brought me into the field, such as interpreting live information sessions presented in English and French into Spanish on the legal process of asylum claims and Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) hearings for newly arrived asylum-seekers. I had the opportunity to help prepare the UNHCR鈥檚 information on new legislation for provincial and federal policy recommendations, which taught me that advocacy must be grounded in thorough research to effectively inform decision-makers and align Canada鈥檚 domestic decisions with its international legal obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. I compiled weekly highlights for the UNHCR Bureau in Geneva to monitor new asylum legislation, border matters, and high-level political developments in Canada in the morning, then helped raise funds for UNHCR field operations abroad in the afternoon. Either way, whether it was Joey or Tania who asked me, I was more than happy to tag along or do the task with attention to detail because I was driven by the UNHCR鈥檚 values that I carry with me now, that when people are concerned, no detail is too small. This is something I learned during my internship, as I started off overwhelmed with the amount of details and information that went into my tasks, but with the guidance of my colleagues and with practice over time, I was able to carry this value forward.聽

Although I held the title of Protection Intern, I had the privilege of supporting the Montreal office across several projects and collaborating with multiple units throughout UNHCR Canada, which allowed me to witness the many ways in which refugee protection work takes shape both provincially and federally. I contributed to the World Refugee Day event held in Toronto, which allowed me to engage with colleagues across Canada and take part in the national dimension of UNHCR鈥檚 work. Without the generous support of Mrs. Wendy Patton Keys, making the most out of this exceptional internship, including covering the costs associated with traveling to Toronto, would not have been possible.

At the core of it all, I learned the ins and outs of the Canadian asylum system, how it aligns with international law, Refugee Status Determination (RSD), and how it can improve. At UNHCR, interns are trusted, and you can make of this internship what you want. I am especially grateful to Joey and Tania for their constant guidance, for welcoming every one of my many questions, and for trusting me with meaningful work!

Lastly, internships are meant to serve as a testing ground to determine whether one genuinely wants to work in the field they study, and this internship confirmed for me that not only do I love studying what I study, but I am fulfilled intellectually and personally when engaging with international human rights and refugee law in practice. This fall, I will continue feeding this curiosity by receiving academic credit through POLI 599 for this internship and writing my thesis under the supervision of Professor Megan Bradley on how asylum policies at the federal and provincial levels intersect with media portrayals and public discourse on refugees, as well as the role UNHCR plays within this structure.