Aiding Others: Osa Yukie / President, Association for Aid and Relief, Japan

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is Osa Yukie.

She's the head of an international NGO

called the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan.

In February 2022, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Immediately after the invasion began,

the Association for Aid and Relief sent staff to the region,

providing emergency support to Ukrainians

who had fled to neighboring countries.

Founded 40 years ago,

AAR has offered humanitarian aid in conflict zones

and disaster areas around the world.

It has worked to remove existing landmines and campaigned

to ban them altogether.

Osa herself has been doing humanitarian work since her 20s,

helping people in need in places ranging

from Cambodia to the former Yugoslavia.

The foundations of the global order have been shaken by this war.

How must we respond?

Osa Yukie speaks with us about the true meaning of humanitarian work.

Aiding Others

I think everyone was stunned by this Ukraine crisis.

One thing it made me remember is that

the world is just full of conventional weapons,

enough to kill us all several times over.

Why is it that some of us have to die in this way?

In the end, we humans are the cause of all of it.

And we might be the victim, or we might be the perpetrator.

I think it's very important that we don't forget that.

Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

More than 10 million people have fled the country,

close to a quarter of the total population.

This line of cars is headed for the Ukrainian border.

By March, AAR had dispatched staff to the region.

They visited refugee centers, spoke with refugees and volunteers,

and got to work doing what they could to help.

People were leaving in great force.

They were just flowing out like water.

Social media is so advanced these days.

We weren't actually on the battlefield,

but we could watch it in real time.

This is the first conflict that's felt like that.

Ukraine's neighbors opened their borders quickly.

At first, I wasn't sure our group actually had a role to play.

But then the attacks intensified.

And when we surveyed the different neighboring countries,

Moldova seemed like it needed help.

From an early stage, we made the decision to be active in Moldova.

Moldova is a small nation

just northwest of the Black Sea that shares a border with Ukraine.

Since the start of the war,

500,000 people have entered Moldova from Ukraine.

Currently, Moldova hosts about 90,000 refugees.

AAR is offering support to shelters set up by local groups.

The Moldovan government cannot provide

all the necessary economic assistance,

so AAR has raised donations to pay for food,

daily necessities, and more.

Many people have fled to neighboring countries.

And Moldova is Ukraine's single poorest neighbor.

Refugees are living in places like repurposed dorms

so we bring the food there.

And lots of people had to flee with just the clothes on their backs,

so we get a lot of requests for washing machines.

We install those.

In this conflict,

large numbers of refugees are being taken in by ordinary citizens.

We call these sorts of people "invisible refugees."

If you looked on the street,

you couldn't tell who's a refugee and who's not.

Reaching these people can be tough.

It also makes it tough for their hosts to receive assistance.

In addition, Osa and her group are also

aiding displaced persons within Ukraine.

They are providing both food and medicine

to internally displaced persons at this convent in western Ukraine.

They have also helped to build health facilities

for people who have become ill during their prolonged exile from home...

as well as temporary kindergartens so that young children can thrive.

We're helping out at a convent in the province of Ternopil.

The people living there are women and children,

refugees who don't have any other family in the area.

We deliver the things they need for daily life, including food.

We get these supplies via other convents in Poland.

The vast majority of refugees in war

are generally made up of women and children.

And men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine,

so that's even more true in this conflict.

Part of our work is caring for these children's wellbeing.

Of course things like counseling are important.

But we provide spaces to play, that sort of support.

We can't change their situation,

but we can give them laughter each day.

A little peace of mind. It adds up.

I think that's very important.

The Association for Aid and Relief was established in 1979.

At that time,

political turmoil was sweeping Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Many people were fleeing their homelands.

The AAR was originally founded to aid these refugees in particular.

Soma Yukika was 67 years old when she founded our group.

In 1978 and '79,

we had lots of refugees coming from Vietnam to Japan in small boats.

And Ms. Soma was told by a friend

that the response from Japan was extremely cold.

They heard on the news that Japan accepted something like two refugees.

In total!

But she knew Japan wasn't such a cold place.

The Japanese had a tradition of goodwill toward others.

She started the organization

to let people everywhere know that when in need,

we should all help each other.

And the world did need help.

The 1980s and every decade since have seen severe refugee crises

in various places around the globe.

AAR undertook a range of humanitarian activities,

with the hope of helping all refugees and socially marginalized groups.

Much of the organization's work is

focused on supporting people with disabilities.

This work takes many forms,

from the provision of assistive technology

to vocational training programs.

We want to be providing aid in the places that no one else is reaching.

When we surveyed the needs of people

with disabilities in conflict zones,

we heard lots of stories about

how people weren't getting the proper support,

and so they weren't even able to leave their homes.

People with disabilities are the least likely to receive proper support

so we began supporting them.

In Cambodia, if you lose your legs to a landmine,

people will say it's karma.

You did something to deserve it.

Our efforts to provide support

generated valuable case studies for best practices.

This knowledge helps communities act,

and changes the way they see disability.

We want to turn helping people in difficult situations

into something that has a wider impact on society as a whole.

That's essential.

AAR has done humanitarian work in over 60 countries and territories.

They're currently providing aid to various refugee groups,

from Syrians to the Rohingya,

with 36 initiatives, encompassing 480,000 people in total.

Refugees haven't gone away.

If anything, there are more than ever.

We just have to keep going.

There are always so many more people

we haven't helped than people we have.

Our work will never be "enough," it'll never be finished.

Osa first became interested in humanitarian work

during her college years

while on study abroad in the United States.

During college, I spent a year studying abroad in Indiana.

The student body was 95 or 96% white.

Almost no Black students.

I faced discrimination, it's fair to say.

That experience really soured me on America.

I came back to Japan thinking we were different,

but that's when I realized

that Japan also discriminates against minorities.

For the first time, I had been the minority.

I had faced discrimination.

And I realized that it could be just as bad in Japan.

When I came back from my study abroad,

I wanted to work with minority ethnic groups.

After college, Osa joined the Japan office of a foreign company

and also began volunteering with AAR,

offering educational support to Southeast Asian refugees.

The next year, she joined AAR full-time,

and went on to work on humanitarian efforts in Cambodia,

the former Yugoslavia, and more.

One of Osa's most important efforts with AAR has involved landmines.

She has partnered with a British NGO on landmine removal initiatives,

and is providing education to locals on how to avoid landmines.

AAR is affiliated with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines,

which in 1997 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

People often ask me

why a group for "aid and relief" deals with landmines.

The answer is simple.

To do our work, if you want to support refugees,

you have to tackle landmines.

When a conflict is over, people should be happy, right?

You go back to the way things were.

That was the premise of my work.

But once the war was over, landmine casualties actually increased.

I was just dumbfounded.

I realized we needed to deal with the landmines themselves.

Our humanitarian work is sort of like watering the desert.

There is so much more we cannot do, compared to what we can.

But if we remove just one landmine, that's one life saved.

That did seem powerful to me. It really did.

As the war in Ukraine drags on,

AAR is thinking hard about how it can be most effective.

The organization is currently providing financial support

to Ukrainian refugees in Japan.

They have also begun efforts in Ukraine

to help people with disabilities, and to clear landmines.

Ukraine has received remarkable attention.

That fact itself is absolutely fantastic,

but I hope it can spur other good things as well.

You shouldn't think that what's happening in Ukraine

is only affecting Ukrainians.

Don't think that it doesn't affect you.

That sort of attitude will never lead to positive change.

If you see yourself as being connected to this issue,

even if you can't do anything right now,

someday that connection will happen.

Cherish your everyday life.

Treasure it.

But at the same time,

be aware that your everyday life is in some way connected to countries

that might seem far away.

That can help us.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

I wrote, "Make a difference!"

There's only so much we can do individually,

but it all starts with that small, individual effort.

Every action you take makes a difference.

You create an opportunity, you create a change

and then eventually you have a big wave.