Tanzania LAWA Fellow 1995-1996 L.L.B., University of Dar es Salaam L.L.M., Georgetown University Law Center Protection Officer United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees, Branch Office 29 Wilkinson Road Freetown , Sierra Leone Work Phone: 232 32 420680/420288 Work Fax: 232 32 420660 Email: allyn@unhcr.org, hnyanjagi@yahoo.com

Affiliations: Tanzanian Women Lawyers Association, African Society of International and Comparative Law Jijenge Reproductive Health Programme under the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF). Women Lawyers Association (LAZWOLA) Lake Victoria Ecological Society (LAVESO)

Profile:

Presently, Ms. Ally is on assignment in Nairobi (on Mission to Hargeisa, Somaliland).  She worked in Sierra Leone since May 2004, where her work focused mainly in facilitating the voluntary return of refugees to their country of origin and their reintegration within their communities as a lasting solution to their plight. In 2004, Ms. Ally was involved in the Sierra Leonean refugee return and reintegration operation at the policy and operational level including returnee monitoring in terms of property rights, prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, child protection and reintegration of the most vulnerable returnees. She also served as focal person for sexual exploitation and trafficking issues.

From 2005 to date, she has been coordinating the voluntary repatriation operation of Liberian refugees. In the course of her work, she has participated in Regional technical and cross border meetings in order to share experiences. She has also organized several training programs for the staff of UNHCR and its partners, including other UN Agencies, local and international NGOs all of whom are involved in the day to day implementation of the Repatriation programme in Sierra Leone. The protection of refugee women and children remains central in her daily work.

Ms. Ally is placed in Hargeisa, Somaliland where her work involves, among other things, leading the protection cluster under the “Cluster Leadership Approach” for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), a new initiative currently being piloted in five countries in the world including Somalia. The cluster leadership approach is a mechanism to address identified gaps in response and enhance the quality of humanitarian action by strengthening partnerships between NGOs, international organizations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and UN agencies. It is part of a wider reform process aimed at improving the effectiveness of humanitarian response by ensuring greater accountability, predictability and partnership. Ms. Ally is very eager to be part of this new approach.

LAWA Experience:

In 1996, Ms. Ally completed her graduate thesis: “The Plight of Refugee Women: Protection from Sexual Violence in Refugee Camps,” in which she described the abuses and lack of protection of refugee women in Western Tanzania. For her fellowship internship, she worked at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. She designed and administered a questionnaire to assess how the U.S. immigration (INS) Gender Guidelines were being used in the training of asylum officers and whether immigration judges applied the guidelines in determining gender-based persecution claims brought by women applicants. In November 1995, she presented the findings of the study to the Washington Women Advocacy Group in Washington D.C. and attended a conference by the African Studies Association in Orlando, Florida.

Ms. Ally took full advantage of the opportunities of the LAWA program. In September 1996 she attended the 7 th International Association for Women in Development (AWID) Forum “Beyond Beijing, From Words to Action,” in Washington D.C. In October 1996 she attended a staged reading of “Necessary Targets” by Eve Ensler, starring Meryl Streep at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York. The play was organized by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and portrayed the impact of conflict-based displacement and problems facing Bosnian refugee women in camps.

In October 1996, Ms. Ally presented a paper on “Sexual Violence, a Need to Reform Rape Law in Tanzania,” and also attended presentations by other LAWA fellows at GULC. Additionally, she attended testimonies before the U.S. Senate Foreign Committee for Africa, participated in lobbying for U.S. funding of refugee programmes in Africa, and campaigned against the U.S. supply of arms to the third world.

Additional Experience:

Following her fellowship, Ms. Ally resumed her position as the only female States Attorney in the Lake Victoria Zone office, as well as her prosecutorial position in Mwanza. From September 1997 to March 1998 she acted as a consultant with UNICEF in Tanzania. There, she conducted a study to assess the disproportionate effect of a mass round-up of Burundian nationals from villages in Western Tanzania and placing them in refugee camps.

In 1999 she joined the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the Branch Office in Dar es Salaam as Assistant Protection Officer in the Protection/Legal Section, where she coordinated UNHCR’s Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) programme under the Ted Turner Funding. She also carried out other protection tasks ranging from dealing with individual protection cases to carrying out broader protection objectives including intervention against refaulement and arbitrary detention. Other major tasks included participating in the review of the Tanzania Refugees Act of 1998 and the Refugee Policy review under the Prime Minister’s Office in 2000, as well as revising the 1995 UNHCR Guidelines on Sexual Violence in 2001 and submitting a revised draft entitled “Sexual and Gender-based Violence against Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons: Guidelines on Prevention and Response” to UNHCR HQ for comments and finalization. The final version was published in May 2003.

In September 2002, Ms. Ally was reassigned to UNHCR Peshawar, Pakistan as Protection Officer where she focused on the protection of Afghan refugee in the camps. She designed strategies for prevention and response to SGBV, border monitoring, registration and documentation and preferential treatment for refugee women, children and other most vulnerable refugees in the delivery of protection and assistance. She also coordinated the registration and issuance of birth certificates by the local authorities to Afghan refugee children born in Pakistan, an initiative that was implemented for the first time in the history of refugee work in Pakistan, in December 2003.

In May 2004 she was reassigned to UNHCR Branch Office, Freetown, Sierra Leone as Protection Officer and subsequently to Sub-Office Kenema, Sierra Leone until December 2006.

Seminars and Workshops:

March 1999: Prevention against Sexual and Gender-based Violence, Launching the Ted Turner funded Programme (for Tanzania, Kenya, Liberia, Guinea and Ghana), held in Nairobi, Kenya

June 1999: Advanced training for leadership and Skills (ATLAS) Conference on “Legal Advocacy and Sustainable Development”, Accra, Ghana

Sep 1999: Fourth Annual Gender Studies Conference (AGSC), Tanzania Gender Network Programme, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

October 1999: Training on Refugee Status Determination (RSD), UNHCR Geneva

May 2000: Emergency management Training Programme, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

May 2000: Workshop on Statelessness and Stateless Persons, Kigali Rwanda,

June-Dec 2000: Foundations Protection Learning Programme (PLP), UNHCR, Geneva

March 2001: Sexual and Gender-based Violence Conference, Lessons Learned Conference, Geneva

2002: Workshop on Emergence management (WEM), Camp Le-Jeune, North Carolina, USA

2005: Training on Age and Gender Diversity Mainstreaming (AGDM), Freetown, Sierra Leone.

2006: Sexual Harassment and Abuse at the Workplace, by United Nations, New York,