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Craig Murphy, Programme Manager for the Emerging Resettlement Countries Joint Support Mechanism, International Organization for Migration (IOM), Geneva talks about his organization’s role in Operation Syrian Refugees, including where the IOM set up processing centres and transportation for more than 25,000 Syrian refugees in 100 days.

Transcript: Pop-Up Office

Video length: 2:18

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An image fades up of a Canadian military plane at an airport.

Text appears: Operation Syrian Refugees – Phase 3

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Text appears: Pop-up Office

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Text appears: Craig Murphy, Programme Manager for the Emerging Resettlement Countries Joint Support Mechanism, International Organization for Migration (IOM), Geneva.

craig murphy: The support was from basically doing the processing, preparing cases, interviewing refugees. Eventually it included health assessments …

The image fades to a group of families sitting outside a medical facility in the refugee camp. The image fades back to Craig.

craig murphy: doing the medical examinations and pre-departure orientation or cultural orientation … and then after a case was ready, eventually we were organizing the charter flights and the movement and logistics from the Middle East to arrival in Canada. So that was the main role that IOM was responsible for in this operation… I worked in refugee resettlement in many contexts and over a number of years …

The image fades to a crowd of refugees with border agents among them. The image then cuts to a close-up of a man with his hand over his forehead looking in the distance. The image then cuts to refugees with suitcases waiting to board a bus. The image then cuts to more refugees sitting on their luggage accompanied by their children. The image fades back to Craig.

craig murphy: and this was the first time that the numbers that were being discussed, you know, 25,000, and initially was going to be in 4 weeks, and then of course that was lengthened to 3 months, but the scale was … what I remember most as I was preparing to depart [was that] it was a very rapid deployment – I think maybe 24 hours or 48 hours from when I was asked to go, to when I was in Amman. I stayed in Amman the whole time. But the thing I also remember most was just the level, the involvement, the seriousness behind it when we arrived … I came straight from the airport in Amman to a big conference room and there was probably 20 or 30 people sitting around the table,  extremely senior officials from the military, from the Canadian government, from the Jordanian government, from the United Nations High Commission[er] for Refugees (UNHCR) and of course the organization I was representing, IOM … and things were moving very quickly and big decisions were being made and we were expected to build something from scratch in a very short period of time, so I think the speed and the scale and the seriousness across all departments and all divisions of government was something that I really remember and for me was unprecedented.

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The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada corporate signature along with the copyright message “Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, represented by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2020.” are shown on screen followed by the “Canada” wordmark.