Cap-Pelé man devotes career to Red Cross relief work
Published Monday October 6th, 2008
Charles Cormier embarks on missing to troubled South Ossetia region of Georgia
Charles Cormier isn't your typical world traveller.
There aren't any travel brochures or tourist stops where he has been going over the past two decades, only strife and despair.
Cormier, 55, has been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) co-ordinating efforts to provide food, shelter and rebuild infrastructure for people in countries torn apart by war, civil conflict and natural disasters. In war-torn lands, the Red Cross and its workers also help in the search for missing relatives after families are displaced and members dispersed.
From his Cap-Pelé home to countries a world away, he has played a part in the humanitarian efforts directed by the ICRC in some 20 countries, including Congo (formerly Zaire), Burundi, Tanzania, Afghanistan and Georgia, in the break-away province of Abkazia on the western border with Russia.
His next mission will take him back to Georgia to help with the logistics of getting food and water to residents of South Ossetia, a region caught in a tug of war between Russia and Georgia, and rebuilding civilian infrastructure there.
Cormier will attend a briefing in Geneva, then head to Moscow which has approved the humanitarian mission to South Ossetia.
He is part of a team of international workers with the ICRC and local groups, all intent on helping the civilian population, he said.
Cormier began his humanitarian career in 1986, volunteering his services with the Southeast New Brunswick Red Cross until 1994. He was then asked to go to Burundi, Tanzania and Zaire where residents of refugee camps numbered up to a million strong, to oversee distribution of food from huge warehouses. The ICRC workers helped build five water purification plants in the Republic of Congo as part of the relief effort.
Refugees typically lived in 100-square-foot mud huts which could house as many as 10 people, he said.
In Burundi, he remembers an old woman clasping his hand and crying, thanking him for saving her life.
While the work is rewarding, it's also frustrating. In Congo, committee members went in after the 1996-98 war to help with rebuilding and development, only to see war break out again.
Cormier also spent three months in the Darfur region in western Sudan in 1998 before the war started.
There is always someone at war somewhere, he said.
The work often puts Cormier in dangerous conditions. In Baghdad, for example, a colleague from Oromocto who was part of the logistics team that had been in the country for two years, was shot dead in 2003.
More recently, a colleague was fired upon and injured in Chad.
Asked about security concerns and fears for his own life, Cormier replied simply that people can be hit and killed by traffic walking across a busy street.
In each country, various ethnic groups have different customs and beliefs that workers must learn as part of their relief effort and to remain neutral and respectful. It can be a bit like walking on eggs, Cormier said.
In Iran, for example, you may shake the hand of a man but not his wife until she offers it. In some other cultures, it's considered bad etiquette to clean your plate at a meal, as it could be interpreted as saying the host didn't provide enough food for his guests.
In the downtime, Cormier was able to obtain a bachelor of administration degree by correspondence through a British university.
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