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Melissa Fleming 00:00
Migration. It's controversial, and it's happening every day all over the world because of poverty, because of climate change, because of opportunity. And as my guest this week knows, it's all about people in search of a better life.

 

Amy Pope 00:15
You just give somebody a little space. Everybody has purpose. Everybody has dreams. Everybody wants to be seen.

 

Melissa Fleming 00:31
Amy Pope is the Director General of the International Organization for Migration. And it's her job to help. From the United Nations, I'm Melissa Fleming. This is Awake at Night. Welcome, Amy.

 

Amy Pope 00:54
Thank you. It's great to be here with you.

 

Melissa Fleming 00:56
Amy, you're the first woman ever to hold this position, and we're going to get into that in a little while. But first of all, I'd just like to know what made you decide to work in the field of migration. Because in so many countries, migration is such a hot topic, controversial in many places although human beings move for all sorts of reasons.

 

 

Amy Pope 01:21
So, it actually probably goes back to my university days when as my senior thesis I wrote the paper on whether the EU could come up with a common migration policy. And it was still pretty early. It was sort of the early 90s, and it was not clear. I mean, the EU was sort of a new concept, right? And when I looked at how the member states were going to interact with one another, it was clear to me that national identity, migration, border management was going to be very fraught. So as a just intellectual issue, it was really interesting to me as a college student.

But then my first real job job was doing civil rights law. I was a civil rights prosecutor, and I prosecuted hate crimes. I prosecuted police misconduct, police brutality, and I prosecuted human trafficking cases. And what I saw across the board was, while we still have very serious issues with civil rights in general in the United States, the population that was most at risk and most vulnerable were migrants and not necessarily trafficked migrants. Obviously, that's the example everybody points to, but there's a whole host of people who are working under the radar, who are exploited regularly, who are not paid fairly, who are living in substandard conditions, who are regularly vilified, marginalized, have no vote or representation. And that felt to me like the civil rights issue of our time.

 

Melissa Fleming 02:54
I mean, you're sitting... I think you're from Cleveland and you are sitting in a US university, and you decided to look into EU migration policies. What...? Just explain that.

 

Amy Pope 03:07
So, I studied abroad. My junior year I went to Paris and I... There was an exchange programme with Sciences Po. And so, you know, it was... The conversations were all about the EU. It was post-Maastricht. And what was that going to look like? And it was this very new concept. I mean, it was the days where they still had separate money. There was no euro, right? So, it was just this kind of new frontier in a space where issues around, you know, border policies, migration policies had seemed rather settled. And it felt at that point that we were going into this really uncharted territory. Now, I had no idea how this would play out over the next several decades, but I had no confidence that they were ever going to come up with any kind of common migration policy.

 

Melissa Fleming 03:52
And they have.

 

Amy Pope 03:53
It's kind of extraordinary. I mean, the fact that they just agreed to this pact is, I mean, I'm really quite shocked. I did not predict it.

 

Melissa Fleming 04:02
Well, it's been a while since you were in college. Not that long, but it's been... It's taken some years.

 

Amy Pope 04:08
It's taken some time. Yeah.

 

Melissa Fleming 04:10
You've said if it's managed well, migration can be a force for prosperity. And many politicians though around the world wouldn't agree with you.

 

 

Amy Pope 04:21
It's because they're ignoring the evidence. I mean, let's start with the United States, right? Every single American has a migration origin story, right? My family. Right? We have on my mother's side a grandmother who fled Sweden because they were really, really poor and they didn't own land and they couldn't make a living. And there were opportunities in the United States. And by the way, they moved to a community in northwestern Pennsylvania with a bunch of other Swedes. They literally rebuilt the church from their hometown in Sweden. They didn't integrate very well in that first generation.

Now my grandmother and subsequent generations obviously have integrated. But, you know, my grandmother on my dad's side, her mom was Indian, her dad was British. They met and married and had children in Guyana in South America. My grandma ended up in Jamaica, where she met my grandfather during World War II. And then she came and moved to the United States. Right? So, in my own life, in my own family... And by the way, that's not unique. That is every single American, right?

And we know in this country that migration works. It's why the country has really developed the way that it has. It is behind the innovation that we see. It is essential to the continuing economic recovery post-COVID. So, despite the fact that it seems that every incoming generation of migrants then wants to pull up the drawbridge so nobody else can follow, we know that without migration the country wouldn't be where it is today.

 

Melissa Fleming 06:02
Then why is it so controversial?

 

Amy Pope 06:04
Well, migrants can't vote. Let's start there. Right? It goes back to why this was the defining civil rights issue for me when I was a young lawyer. It's because migrants are very, very easy to vilify. So, when there is a crime wave, when people are having a hard time finding a job, when it's hard to find a house, it's very easy to say it's the migrants that are keeping us from achieving our goals. And by the way, there are very few people who are advocating. Forget the migrants who can't vote themselves, but there are not a lot of incentives for others to advocate for them. So, I think that's first and foremost.

Now, that doesn't take away from the fact that when there are large numbers of people who come across borders or large waves of migrants coming into a community, that it can, and it does create tensions. It can create competition over scarce resources, particularly in a community that doesn't have a lot already. So, we need to recognize that pressure. We need to address that pressure. We can't pretend it doesn't exist. But at the same time, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it doesn't even take very long for migration to actually pay out pretty significantly for the communities who host the migrants, and definitely for the communities that migrants are coming from.

 

Melissa Fleming 07:31
I mean, we're sitting here doing this interview in New York City, and New York City has declared a crisis because of so many migrants here. I mean, is there a position that IOM has on the migrant crisis in the US and how to manage it?

 

 

Amy Pope 07:51
I think there are a couple of things. One is even using the word crisis is a bit of a misnomer. It's mismanagement really is what's happening. Right? It is not that the United States is full and there's no room left for migrants. And frankly, it takes a conversation with a small-town mayor who's saying, 'Look, we really need migrants to come and revitalize our community.' I am really impressed by the story of the founder of Chobani yogurt, who you know, right? He's been a real advocate for refugees and vulnerable migrants. And his story...

 

Melissa Fleming 08:28
Hamdi.

 

Amy Pope 08:29
Hamdi. Right? So Hamdi came to the United States. He fled T¨¹rkiye. He started making cheese of all things, you know, with his college professor. And he ended up buying a defunct Kraft Foods factory in the town of Utica, New York with a small business association loan. And that company has revitalized that town. And his story is not unique. We see that story repeated all over the United States, all over Europe and the rest of the world.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:03
Yeah. I mean indeed many Western countries are facing an aging crisis and not enough people to work, not enough descendants to take up the reigns. So, what would you say to those governments?

 

Amy Pope 09:22
So, it is fascinating to watch this evolve around the world. I mean, first of all, BCG [Boston Consulting Group] did a report for us where they show that 30 of the top economies faced labour shortages last year. And it's not all just the ones you would expect. For example, Mexico had a labour shortage. Obviously, Japan and the Republic of Korea. And there they're quite desperate because their birth rate is so low. They do not have a regular influx of migration. They don't have a history of migration. Right? So, they're desperate to find ways to bring in talent at multiple skill levels. High skilled, low skilled, right, they have gaps. So that for me is a precursor of what will happen across economies in the world. Japan and the Republic of Korea are the front end of this right now, but not far behind them are countries like Spain and Portugal, Italy, Greece. Right? And then it doesn't take that much longer before you start to get to the other economies of Europe. The economies of Uruguay, Guyana, Barbados. I mean, around the world, we're going to see this emerge.

And so, while the tensions of the moment are creating a political polarization that is frankly very unhelpful, it's also not fact based. And unless governments can kind of see past it, they're going to be stuck. And people are going to move regardless because the job opportunities will be there, but they'll move in less orderly, less safe, less dignified ways. Now, this is going to become even more complicated when you look at the impact of climate change. Right? So, climate is already displacing people. You know, if you can't farm, if you can't feed your livestock, if the sea levels are rising so much that your house has disappeared, or the storms are so intense and so frequent that you can't rebuild. People are making choices to move, and we're seeing that.

 

Melissa Fleming 11:27
Well, I mean, I believe your first mission as Director General was to the Horn of Africa, countries that are facing horrible effects of climate change for which they had little responsibility. Is that why you went there? And what did you see?

 

 

Amy Pope 11:42  
It's ground zero for these forces. Right? So first and foremost, you have the impact of climate and the impact of climate change on really vulnerable communities. There are a lot of post-conflict communities. There are still huge refugee camps, right? There is very uneven development, very high poverty in parts of the Horn. And this pressure of drought, series of droughts over and over and over again and then flood. And so, the ability for people to make a living or to even think beyond the next season has basically been eroded.

So, there are huge pressures on people to move in addition to the pressures that were already there and in addition to the vulnerabilities that already existed. Right? And we also know in the Horn there are movements south down through countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia into South Africa, where they are still finding jobs. There are movements to the Gulf and then of course, migration throughout the rest of Africa. And so that is a place where we're seeing these dynamics play out in technicolour, if you will, right?

 

Melissa Fleming 13:02
In technicolour and often ending in tragedy.

 

Amy Pope 13:04
Often ending in tragedy. And that's for me the part where we all within the international community have a role to play. So, the first is, you know, we save lives, right? That's what we all do across the Ãå±±½ûµØfamily. But for too long we kind of get stuck there. And so, you see people living in camps for generations. And so, this is where I think the opportunities around migration exist. Some of it's regional. So, the African Union has as its 2063 strategy they are looking to create the free movement of goods. It's not unlike the EU by the way at the time I was looking at it. And with the free movement of goods, you need to have the movement of people. So, there's an opportunity in the region.

And so, part of my trip to the Horn was to engage with the AU. But also, there are opportunities to build out more resilience for communities. So, a Somali farming family who is facing successive seasons of drought, right now traditionally we all wait for them to move. We wait for them to be displaced, and then we provide them with, I don't know, whatever... Maybe a tarp or some non-food items. You know, if we're all really good, we get our act together and everybody provides their little bit. Right? But that's a terrible way to engage - waiting until people are displaced when something like drought we can start to foresee.

There's amazing data we can pull around soil moisture levels, and we can start to project whether a community will be able to stay in place and if not, where they're likely to move. And then the next step is - does that move create conflict? Does that move lead to greater resilience? You know, you can start to build this out. That's where I see... We see it in the Horn, but we see it all around the world. And so, this is an opportunity for us to start to get ahead of it.

 

Melissa Fleming 14:57
Did you meet one of those farmer families?

 

Amy Pope 14:59
I met so many of them. I met people, Somalis who had been in the camps because they were refugees. They'd gone back home to Somalia. They could not make a living there because of drought. So, they came back to Kenya. That's the worst. That was the worst story ever.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 15:17
And came back to Kenya to live in a camp where there is...

 

Amy Pope 15:21
In a camp.

 

Melissa Fleming 15:22
Very little self-agency and....

 

Amy Pope 15:25
And opportunity to work.

 

Melissa Fleming 15:27
So that's one of your goals as Director General to focus more on prevention. Preventing people who have to move for those kinds of compelling reasons who would prefer to stay.

 

Amy Pope 15:39
Who would prefer to stay. Many of the people we serve are fleeing drought or flooding or poverty, and there are no protections for those communities. But they're no less vulnerable. Right? They are still starving. They are still, in some cases, extreme cases, dying. Right?

 

Melissa Fleming 16:01
I'm just... want to take you back to that trip to the Horn of Africa. Is there one situation that really just doesn't leave you when you're trying to make the case for why to help people adapt to climate change, or why you need to understand why people are fleeing?

 

Amy Pope 16:22
There are so many cases. Aside from the woman I spoke to who had come back from Somalia into Kenya, I met a South Sudanese young man who had grown up, you know, postwar, right? And if you go back to South Sudan now, you'll know that flood is the major, major issue here. There are people who just cannot catch a break. They're being displaced time and time and time again. And in fact, what we've seen is people will be displaced then you'll see the community go into the forest to harvest wood, to build their fires, do their cooking, build their shelter contributing to the decline, the deforestation, which then makes them more vulnerable to the next flood that comes through. Right?

And I spoke to a young man from South Sudan who had kind of lived this cycle. And he said to me, 'There's got to be a better way.' And he had gone to school. You know, he was now going to school. He'd had an opportunity through his... You know, he's a remarkable young man. And was now focusing on water management, water infrastructure. Right? I mean, that for me was such a wakeup call. You know, why are we accepting that people will just get moved from place to place to place to place, and they'll always be fleeing the next flood or fleeing the next storm? And how do we actually...? What does it mean to build resilience? What does it mean to build for the jobs of the future? What does it mean to use migration as a tool, rather than just looking at it as a problem?

 

Melissa Fleming 18:00
It sounds like you've really been thinking about your mandate. I mean, you've been in the job for just...

 

Amy Pope 18:06
Five months.

 

Melissa Fleming 18:06
Five months, yes. And before that you were one of the deputies.

 

Amy Pope 18:10
Yeah.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 18:11
I mean, every time a woman gets elected or appointed head of a Ãå±±½ûµØagency, there's some, 'Wow! There's the first ever woman.' How does that make you feel to be called the first ever woman, you know, elected as IOM executive director?

 

Amy Pope 18:29
Well, I kind of love it. So, I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian family. I'm the oldest of five. And my dad had said to me, 'Well, women can be leaders of other women.' When I was a kid. And that made me really angry because I felt like, 'Wait. I'm actually pretty good at what I do, right?' I was getting good grades and I was president of this and that. And, you know, you're... You know, I really worked hard. And my dad saying that to me. And by the way, my dad sort of now has to take responsibility that he is basically responsible for the fact that he now has four feminist daughters. Right? Which was not the outcome that I think he intended, but he's begrudgingly admitted that that was... It's a good thing now.

But for me, this was much more than just about leading IOM as a woman, right? There are not a lot of women who lead humanitarian agencies. They're not a lot of women in our space within IOM who were chiefs of mission, especially of the more significant, the big emergency operations. There were not a lot of women, there still aren't a lot of women who are in the most senior positions getting paid the same as men. We still have some pretty serious gaps within our organization.

And there's so many women who have said to me, 'Seeing you do this gives me confidence in what I can do.' And a lot of men as well, who want to take a picture with me and they'll say, 'I have a daughter and I want to show her what's possible.' So, for me, right...? So, for my 12-year-old self whose dad said you can be a leader of other women to being some part of our staff, the migrants we serve, the young girls I meet, helping them to see about what it's possible to achieve, that's what's so special about being the first woman in this job.

 

Melissa Fleming 20:34
I mean, you mentioned that you come from a conservative Christian family. Is there something about that upbringing that has given you a certain perspective about migrants and their experience?

 

Amy Pope 20:48
Absolutely. I mean, first of all, we didn't grow up with money. My dad was sort of a lay pastor. We moved from Cleveland to Pittsburgh when I was nine so we could start the church in Pittsburgh. And we moved, by the way, into a Jewish community. And my neighbour was a Holocaust survivor, and she was the first woman I met, first person I met who had the tattooed numbers on her arms because she had survived Auschwitz. So that was a defining experience for me. That was a moment where I thought, 'Oh my gosh! What if I had been alive at that time? What would my role have been? Would I have lived up to my expectations and ideals?' I remember that so clearly as a kid, feeling like, 'What would I have done? What, you know...?'  

 

Melissa Fleming 21:34
To try to save...

 

Amy Pope 21:35
To try to respond, right? To respond. And so there was that. But there is also the fact that the values of my family... First of all, money was never the driver of action. The clear message was you live your life for purpose and you live your life to serve. And so, while my dad's view of service is slightly different than my view of service, that is a concept that's embedded with all of us, my sisters, and my brother. Also, we just had a lot of random people coming in our house. Right? You never knew who was going to be sitting around the dinner table. You never knew who... We lived in the church, right? So, you never knew who would walk in the front door? We had all sorts...

 

Melissa Fleming 22:19
Wait a minute. You lived in the church?

 

Amy Pope 22:21  
We lived in the church. We lived in the church.

 

Melissa Fleming 22:23
What does that look like?

 

Amy Pope 22:24
It meant my house, you know, a house that I lived in had a big old sign on the front that had some Bible verse. Right? Which, by the way, as a 12, 13, 14-year-old is really uncomfortable. But by the way, also builds resilience.

 

Melissa Fleming 22:41
So, did you have any say in what the Bible verse was?

 

Amy Pope 22:45
No. And inevitably it was something about repenting. Or, you know, you can imagine.

 

Melissa Fleming 22:51
And could you bring school friends over?

 

Amy Pope 22:53
Oh my God. So, one of my dad's most effective techniques, and I'm not recommending this to your listeners, but I'm sure you've heard the jokes about, like the dad whose daughters bring over boys, and he's sort of menacing. My dad's response was to ask the boys to pray with him before we went out. Right? So, to give you a sense of that dynamic.

 

Melissa Fleming 23:18
They must have had to really want to go out with you.

 

Amy Pope 23:20
Really want to go out with me. Right? It was also... I mean anybody. So, like it's one of the things I kind of love about my dad. My dad is open to everybody, but my dad so strongly believes in his belief that he wants to share it with everybody, and I mean everybody. So again, it's something that builds resilience. It was so uncomfortable when I was a kid, but it also built... You know, I saw my dad living his values.

 

Melissa Fleming 23:50
Were there immigrants in your community, in your church community?

 

Amy Pope 23:53
There were immigrants in our community. And today, you know, my dad is learning Spanish because the number of Latin American migrants in Pittsburgh now has gone up so significantly. And he's so excited to talk to them in Spanish. So, he's working on his Spanish, right? So, you know, it's... I think he and my mom setting that model was really foundational even if my life has sort of taken a different path, even if I don't practice in the way they practice. I mean, that sort of care and respect for people, no matter their background, no matter where they're from, no matter if they seem sort of unusual or different.

And recognizing that everybody... I mean, really at the heart of it was - everybody is worthy. And they saw it as everybody is loved, right? Everybody's loved by God. Everybody is put here for a purpose. And so that for me actually infects what I do. And so, when I am out in the field and I have the opportunity, I always, always talk to people in the field. Right? And you see it. You just give somebody a little space to tell their story or to have their feelings recognized. You see it. Everybody has purpose. Everybody has dreams. Everybody wants to be seen. And that I actually give my parents quite a lot of credit for instilling in me.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 25:22  
I wonder if, you know, thinking about Pittsburgh and if you were there now and there were many, as you mentioned, migrants from Latin America coming into the community and I'm sure they're people there worried about it or opposing it, you know, what would you say to them?

 

Amy Pope 25:44
Well, I'd say we were all there once, so we all could be there at any moment in time. I mean, I kind of think about my own life this way, and partly because I've worked in American politics. And you see, at some point you have all the power. At other points you have no power, right? These things change constantly. And you know from working with refugees that is the story of refugees. And a lot of my work at the beginning of my career was with refugees. One moment you have everything, the next moment you've lost it. And I really believe that is us. That is for anybody living in a place like Pittsburgh or you name it, right? You never know how things could change in a heartbeat, especially if there's a natural disaster. Especially, you know, if political fortunes change or, you know, the stock market collapses. You know, we all have experiences. So, there's that.

But there's also... I remember when I went off to college, there was a big billboard outside of the city limits of Pittsburgh that said something like, 'Will the last person leaving Pittsburgh please turn off the lights.' And it was a recognition of what was happening in Pittsburgh but what is happening around a lot of these Rust Belt cities at the time. As the manufacturing jobs disappeared, people disappeared, and young people - at the time I was one of them - were looking for opportunities elsewhere. And so, Pittsburgh has really embraced migration because they see it as important to the revitalization of the city. And frankly, Pittsburgh, I think, is a success story. It has really rebuilt itself from the old steel town into a town where medical advances, research technology is at the heart of the economy, and migrants are a key piece of that.

 

Melissa Fleming 27:35
So, what does the city centre look like now?

 

Amy Pope 27:39  
It's really diverse and it's diverse from a lot of different angles. Right? You still have the old... The original migrant communities into Pittsburgh were from places like Ukraine, Ireland, a lot of Italians. Right? There was a wave especially to work in the steel mills. Right? That the labour mobility of the time drew a lot of migrants in. Now you see different migrants - migrants from Asia, migrants from Latin America. And you're seeing an evolution. You're also seeing, by the way, the internal migration of a number of black Americans who have come up. In the old... You know, years past [inaudible] multiple, multiple generations, but who migrated from the South into Pittsburgh. So, it's a really diverse place. But I think some of what makes it such a charming place to be, that makes it so interesting is this diversity of people who've come in.

 

Melissa Fleming 28:38
And I'm sure the food is much better.

 

Amy Pope 28:40
It's excellent. It's so much better. It's always... I mean, right? That's where we start, right? I think a population that has good food is going to actually fare much better.

 

Melissa Fleming 28:51
Absolutely. I want to just come back to you [inaudible] because now you're leading a major Ãå±±½ûµØorganization, global organization. You also have a family life. You¡¯re a mother, right? And you have two daughters. I think you have a husband.

 

Amy Pope 29:10
Yes, yes, yes.

 

Melissa Fleming 29:12
Tell me about them.

 

Amy Pope 29:14
So, I'm really lucky. I mean, I have these incredible 13- and 16-year-old daughters who are thoughtful and engaged and who I miss when I travel. But for me actually engaging them in the work has been how we manage this. So, you know, on top of it my husband, their dad is a really involved parent, which I would not be able to do any of this without that level of commitment. Right? And the relationship he has built with our girls.

But then along the way, you know, even as I've come into this crazy job, I try to engage them. We talk about the issues at dinner. I ask them, you know, their advice or I tell them stories of people I've met. I show them pictures from wherever I go. Where I can if my travel overlaps with a school holiday, I try to bring them with me and then take a few days to spend it with them. Right? And they love it.

I mean, they do miss me, right? It is challenging. My 16-year-old went to her first formal dance, and I'd gone with her to help find the dress. But you know, my husband had to help her get ready. And you know, I made the hair appointment and got her the... Helped her, you know, fix the dress before she got there but there were just some things that she had to work out and my husband had to work out with her.

 

Melissa Fleming 30:40
You must have missed that too.

 

 

Amy Pope 30:41
I did. I did miss it. So, there are moments like that, but the big moments I'm there for and most importantly for me is just having this really active engagement with them around what I do and why it matters. You know, my kind of proudest moment as my daughter's parent. She joined our Global Chiefs of Mission conference, and she was doing a project on "Is Feminism Still Necessary?" And she'd been interviewing her classmates about how they saw discrimination play out in the in the school. And I said, 'Charlotte, why don't you interview some of our chiefs of mission? Why don't you interview some...?' We had some migrants come and be part of our Chiefs of Mission conference. 'Why don't you interview them and get their stories?'

And so, she put that together and she met with one young woman who was from South Sudan who spoke about child marriage. Her sister had been married off at the age of 12, who spoke about the lack of agency as a woman, the lack of access to education, who was this really strong voice for the empowering of women. But I could tell it kind of blew away my daughter and her ideas about what feminism looked like. And so those are the moments where it's really satisfying to be a parent and to think, 'Okay, hopefully this is shaping how she sees her responsibility in the world when she's an adult.'

 

Melissa Fleming 32:13
I'm sure it will. You know, when I was at UNHCR, I took my family on a trip to Lebanon, and we went to the refugee camps, and my daughter ended up choosing to spend her one year abroad in Beirut in Lebanon. And now she works for a humanitarian NGO. So, it does instill something. I also missed many, many key moments, but we're still so close. So, it's tough but it's...

 

Amy Pope 32:42
And as a mother, it's really... Well, my girls are so proud of me. They never say to me, 'We wish you were just home. Like hanging out, waiting for us to come home.' They're so proud of me. And they love to tell people what I do. And from the beginning, you know, my early days of working with President Obama... You know, Charlotte's first take your child to work day was with the First Lady. Right? Like, they have these moments, right, that they recognize are not typical. And so...

 

Melissa Fleming 33:18  
She has a picture with Michelle Obama.

 

Amy Pope 33:20
Yeah. It's just like a... I mean, I still remember. She must have been seven or something talking about like what the First Lady had said to them. You know, so it's just like they have these moments that are, you know, they recognize it's an exchange, but they really value it. And so, I feel really lucky.

 

Melissa Fleming 33:41
And they have the stability of their dad.

 

Amy Pope 33:43
Yeah.

 

Melissa Fleming 33:44
Being there.

 

Amy Pope 33:45
And the dog. By the way, that's my best advice for any mom who's working quite a lot - get a dog. And the dog has been through everything with us. The dog moved from the White House, when we moved to the UK, when we moved to Geneva. Right? The dog and it's the best like sweetest dog. So that actually, I hate to say that because it's not like a dog can substitute for a parent, but it's just been this kind of stability.

 

Melissa Fleming 34:13
Force of stability. Okay. What keeps you awake at night these days when you think about migration and the work that you have ahead?

 

Amy Pope 34:25
I feel really called to do as much as I can with a time that I have. And I recognize that these positions are elected and who knows¡­? Who knows, do I have just five years to do this work? Do I have longer? But the number of people who need us to be working for them is huge, and it's growing. And so, what keeps me awake at night is the sense of have I done enough? Have I done what I can on this day to advance the support to these communities that we work with, to advance the opportunities for the people we work with?

You know, it's not the sort of one-off crisis, right? There will be lots of crises. Obviously, the situation in Gaza, obviously Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, DRC. You can name... Right now, we have the most crises we've ever seen. Right? So, it's not the individual crises. It's that have we done as much as we can at this moment in time to support the people who need us? And never for a moment taking as an entitlement or a right that I have this job. I'm lucky to have this job. I am lucky to be paid to do this work. And I feel a responsibility to live up to that expectation. And I want everybody working in our organization to feel that sense of responsibility. We're privileged. We have food on the table. We have stability. We have the ability to make a difference. And so, it's that for me.

 

Melissa Fleming 36:03
I know also because we were together at a women leaders retreat recently, and we see each other out running early in the morning. And I know you bring a yoga mat with you. So, is this...? Why do you do that? Is it important for you to take care of yourself?

 

Amy Pope 36:21
Yes. It keeps me sane. For me, there a couple of things. In the best case, it's time with my family. It's exercise. It's sleep. Those are the three things, right? You can't have all those things all the time. But I can get exercise, right? So, I do I bring my yoga mat everywhere. I exercise in some capacity every day. It's time that's for me. And that keeps me going. And I feel it. If I don't get out and exercise, if I don't have some of that time to myself, I start to feel myself get frustrated more easily and less patient. This actually helps sustain me.

 

Melissa Fleming 37:04
Well, I wish you all the best in your really important function. Migration is just such a key issue and your turning it into an opportunity rather than a problem or a challenge I think is just so important.

 

Amy Pope 37:20
I love it. I as I said, I feel so lucky, and I think there's so much good that we can do. And the only question is how quickly can we do it?

 

Melissa Fleming 37:31
Well, all power to you, Amy. Thank you so much.

 

Amy Pope 37:34
I appreciate it. It's great to be here with you.

 

Melissa Fleming 37:38
Thank you. Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working against huge challenges to make this world a better and safer place.

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. Do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please take the time to review us. It helps more people find the show.

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell, to Adam Paylor, Josie Le Blond, and my colleagues at the UN: Katerina Kitidi, Roberta Politi, Geneva Damayanti, Tulin Battikhi, Bissera Kostova, Anzhelika Devis, and Carlos Macias. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier. Additional music was by Pascal Wyse.