I first met Roberta…

by Maria Stavropoulou

I first met Roberta one afternoon in late 1992 when Francis Deng and she came to the Harvard Human Rights Programme, looking for researchers to help them begin a legal analysis of the rights of IDPs. She and Francis were already soliciting partnerships for this legal research which, after surprisingly few years, turned into the Compilation and Analysis of Legal Norms and shortly afterwards the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

About a year later I started working at the then UN Centre for Human Rights as Francis Deng’s professional assistant. I think Francis will not mind me saying this but over the following couple of years I must have spent much more time with Roberta on the phone than with him. Roberta had a very clear vision about the mandate. She wanted a legal framework in place, she wanted the UN to be engaged, she wanted to have partners in the cause and she needed donors. She managed to mobilise even the most resistant of them all.

Roberta is a persistent lobbyist (some diplomats must have tried to avoid her at times), a merciless editor of reports and texts and a relentless advocate. At the same time she is a good listener, a generous mentor for young professionals and a great supporter of the human rights mandate on internally displaced persons. Her perfectionism, coupled with extraordinary energy, instigated most of the initiatives, projects and activities described in this FMR special issue. Roberta never gave up, and I suspect she will not give up even once she has retired.

Maria Stavropoulou has worked for the United Nations and UNHCR since 1993. Email: maria.stavropoulou@gmail.com