Working for the United Nations in Malawi and Mozambique has had a profound effect on my life. It was my return to Africa after many years of exile, now in a position of empowerment rather than powerlessness. Reunited with my people, I was able to offer my contribution. To learn and to receive. To witness such incredible beauty. Such human resilience. Such pride. It has reinforced my faith in human connectedness and its powerful transformative force.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
The Mozambican Repatriation Operation, the first ever in Africa

Traveling between the dangerous, mine-strewn wastelands of Mozambique and the politically and culturally volatile one-million-plus populated refugee camps of Malawi, Ndoema personally led a global team of non-governmental humanitarian organizations comprised of nearly one hundred international officers, local Malawian staff members and Mozambican political authorities in what remains to date one of the largest and most successful repatriation efforts in the history of the United Nations.

Sitting side by side with tribal chiefs in an unprecedented acceptance of female leadership and authority within an entrenched patriarchal power system, Ndoema implemented visionary grassroots empowerment and leadership training programs designed to restore the dignity and self-determination of an entire population of disenfranchised peoples, resulting in the safe and dignified return of massive numbers of war-ravaged men, women and children back to their homeland by both land and sea.

Ndoema oversaw and coordinated the activities of the following humanitarian organizations under the UN umbrella:

• The Norwegian Refugee Council
• The American Refugee Committee
• Doctors Without Borders
• The American Red Cross
• The UN Food Aid Agency

The UNHCR International Protection Division

Sheparding the continuation of humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian and Somali war victims, Ndoema authored extensive reports substantiating legal precedent for cross-border humanitarian operations upon personal request from the Head of the UNHCR Legal Division. These policies were subsequently implemented as operational guidelines for United Nations field offices worldwide.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission

At the onset of the Serbo-Croatian War in former Yugoslavia, Ndoema was chosen to monitor the activities of the UN Human Rights Commission, subsequently authoring numerous legal briefings underscoring human rights violations, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Now monitoring the activities of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Ndoema again authored multiple legal briefings underscoring government accountability and discrimination policies on a nation-by-nation basis, and their potential impact upon the opportunities for aid and asylum for refugees.