Pablo Mateu hopes Ukraine finds peace and accepts more refugees - May. 18, 2021

In a nation with a population of 41 million people, Ukraine has only about 2,500 officially recognized refugees and another 2,500 asylum seekers, says Pablo Mateu, the departing representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Ukraine.

“That’s peanuts compared to the population of this country,” Mateu told the Kyiv Post in a May 18 interview. “This is a country that is draining. A lot of Ukrainians are moving to Poland, Italy, Israel. They are moving to many other countries. This country has demographic problems. Where are the people going to come from? Countries with demographic problems attract immigrants.”

He thinks that Ukraine should consider welcoming many more refugees, migrant workers, and asylum seekers from around the world. In countering “the anti-refugee rhetoric” in some nations, where politicians play on fears, Mateu likes to remind about “all the good things that immigrants and refugees can bring to your country.”

As it is now, the bureaucratic impediments and lengthy process for seeking asylum in Ukraine send a discouraging message that these people are not welcome. “It takes a long time to be recognized as a refugee,” he said. Syrians and Somalians, in particular, are rejected “almost systematically,” while Afghans fare a bit better but still face lots of rejection.

By contrast, Mateu noted, Ukrainians are largely welcomed abroad, especially in other European nations suffering from demographic issues of their own and a shortage of workers. The more that Ukrainians are exposed to people of different cultures, religions, and races, they will become “more open to living next to someone who might not look like them.”

$120 million spent

These were among the parting words of wisdom from Mateu as he wraps up a five-year assignment in Ukraine and prepares to take a long vacation in his native El Salvador, a Central American nation of 6.6 million people intimately familiar with war, violence, and poverty.

Mateu led the 120-member mission in Ukraine for the UN Refugee Agency that has raised and spent $120 million — roughly $24 million a year during his tenure — to help the nation’s 1.6 million people displaced by Russia’s war, as well as attend to the legal and other needs of refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and stateless persons.

The work involves providing material assistance, such as livelihood grants to refugees and asylum seekers, as well as cash support to some displaced persons and the rehabilitation of houses in the eastern Donbas on both sides of the war front. But a lot of the work involves ensuring legal rights and protections for the dispossessed people that the agency serves.

The UNHCR is one of the few international relief agencies that have permission to work on both sides of the contact line — in the Donbas areas controlled by the Ukrainian government and those run by Kremlin-backed proxies in eastern Ukraine.

On the other side

Consequently, Mateu has made many trips to Russian-supported Donetsk and Luhansk before managing to build trust with the de facto authorities and convince them that the UNHCR mission is “strictly humanitarian” and “we are there to help alleviate the consequences of the conflict.”

In Donetsk, the authorities are “more straightforward” than the ones in Luhansk, where UNHCR encounters more restrictions. There have been “a few situations where colleagues have been summoned to go and explain what they’re doing, but not that many.” An example of a recent problem: A convoy unloading building materials to repair houses in Donetsk was running late, so authorities blocked it from crossing back into the Ukrainian government-controlled side. It took most of his Friday night, but he and colleagues were able to work their contacts so that the convoy could return home the next day.

Mateu treads cautiously when asked whether it’s clear the Kremlin is controlling everything in the occupied territories. He said that while the Russian Federation supports the de facto authorities there and that the UNHCR calls on Russia for help in resolving problems that arise, he is not sure whether the Kremlin’s intervention is always decisive. “It’s difficult to say,” he said.

When he first visited the Donbas, the Russian-supported areas were suffering economically more than they are today, at least visibly.

“In 2016, it was quite depressing. There were very few vehicles on the road, many shops closed, a lot of damaged buildings,” he recalled. “Now it’s slightly different. There are vehicles on the road, people on the streets, new businesses that have opened up.” Still, “people tell us the situation is not good economically — very few employment opportunities, lot of elderly persons because a lot of young people have moved to the government-controlled side of Ukraine or gone to the Russian Federation to look for jobs. Donetsk is a beautiful city. The center looks very nice with restaurants and bars. As you start going towards the suburbs, the situation is different. The roads are in a state of disrepair. They are now making an effort with funding from the Russian Federation.”

By contrast, on the Ukrainian government-controlled side, “the roads are really much better. They have been repaired. There are parks, businesses, restaurants. They realize that on this side, things are improving and (the Kremlin-backed authorities) probably realize they have to do something on the other as well or people will leave there.”

As for when Russia will end its eight-year war, which has killed 14,000 people, Mateu says it’s anybody’s guess. “It’s complex and highly political,” he said.

Grandson of immigrants

It took a while for him to decide on a career path, but some defining experiences led Mateu on the path to humanitarian aid work.

First of all, there’s his multilingual, multiethnic make-up. His paternal grandparents are from the Catalan region of Spain, while his maternal grandparents hailed from Italy. Both sets emigrated to El Salvador — the paternal side because of the Spanish Civil War, the maternal side because of poverty.

He also draws from Salvadoran bloodlines, making for “a rather unusual childhood. We were basically raised with three different cultural streams. Food was a combination of Spanish, Italian and Salvadoran food. We were eight children, always had a crowded house. It was good to grow up in a big Catholic family.”

His upbringing made him conscious of how immigrants are treated in El Salvador. He noticed that immigrants from Europe, like his family, were more welcomed than others.

“If the grandparents were from the Middle East or Asia, maybe the welcoming wouldn’t have been so positive,” he said. “There was discrimination against the Middle East. In Latin America, they’re called “Turks” — a pejorative term — because when they started arriving they had passports from the Ottoman Empire. Asians – people call them Chinese, even though they may be Korean and Japanese. It shows discriminatory practices. Not everybody was welcome.”

His education at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, sealed his career choice. He studied the situation “in different Latin American countries that were forcing people to leave and took an interest in refugees.” He did summer research in Belize, working on a development project for Salvadoran refugees where he learned about “some of the barriers to integrating refugees and people from other parts of the world.”

He joined the UNHCR more than 25 years ago. His career has taken him to missions in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

“That makes me a generalist,” he said. “For me, it’s an advantage; others see it has a limitation.” He realizes the United Nations is a “very particular, very bureaucratic” organization where “you have to watch what you say and how you say it.”

Pablo Mateu, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Ukraine speaks with Kyiv Post on May 17, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)

El Salvador

His homeland is “a very violent country.” He compares his people to Lebanese, who are “friendly and welcoming, but also prone to violence.” There are many reasons for El Salvador’s condition. “We are an overpopulated country. It’s been a very unjust country. We have a lot of people who are extremely poor and people who have money. There is a lot of social exclusion which can lead to violence.”

He said criminal street gangs became popular because they “provided some sort of inclusion.” He said gangs are “attractive to young people who don’t see a way out, either because they don’t have the means to continue studying, or they cannot find gainful employment. You go into a system that provides an income even if that income is earned in a very illegal manner.”

And El Salvador suffered a terrible civil war, from 1979 to 1992, that killed more than 75,000 people. The nation only gained its independence from Spain on Sept. 15, 1821.

Mateu said that while some blame Spanish authoritarianism or American imperialism for El Salvador’s problems, “more recently we have come to terms that a lot of our problems are of our own making. There is more recognition that we have to find solutions and cannot blame other people for our problems.”

Next step

Mateu will leave Ukraine later this month, “going home to rest” and waiting to see where the UN Refugee Agency sends him next. At home to greet him in San Salvador, the nation’s capital, are his 86-year-old mother and four of his siblings; two other siblings are in America; one died.

While he could retire, he believes he “still can contribute to the organization,” in work that he finds satisfying, helping people who need help. “When I went home in the evening, I felt that I accomplished something that day.”

He leaves thinking well of Ukrainians, saying he recommends that his international colleagues hire them because “you won’t regret it.” During his life journey, he’s pick up six languages — Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Italian and English. But he regrets not getting a handle on the Ukrainian language, saying the knowledge would have made him more effective.

He has his fan club in Ukraine and those who will miss him.

On Facebook, ex-Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk wrote: “Pablo is kind, balanced, and unflappable. Just the guy you want in your corner as a refugee or internally displaced person.” Wrote longtime expatriate Paul Niland: “A great shame that Pablo is leaving Ukraine. I’ve got to know him over the last few years and am sad to see him go.”