Denise Brown, the UN’s resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Ukraine, at the UN shelter during an air-raid alert in Kyiv on Dec. 16.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
The air raid sirens sound just after 8 on the morning of Dec. 16, signalling the second Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in three days. In the capital, the metro stations – provisional bomb shelters – fill up, and Denise Brown hustles into the United Nations’ underground cavern directly across the street from her office.
In a sense, Ms. Brown is in her element, which is not to say that she is not frightened. The career of the Canadian UN chief in Ukraine has placed her in some of the most tragic hotspots, from Afghanistan to Somalia. In those countries and others, her duty was to save lives even if it meant risking her own.
In that sense, Ukraine is no different. Yet it is completely different.
Ukraine is not a broken, violent dictatorship or failed state like some of the Sub-Saharan and Central Asian countries that require UN attention. It is a relatively wealthy, stable and peaceful democracy. Or at least was before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in February.
“I do not understand this war. There is no explanation for it,” Ms. Brown says in an interview in the bunker. At that point, she casts her mind back to a small event that grips her to this day.
Denise Brown, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Ukraine, at the UN HQ shelter during air raid alert. Kyiv, Ukraine 16 Dec 2022 Anton Skyba The GLobe and MailAnton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
“I remember in 2007 or 2008, in Somalia, around Baidoa, at one point called the City of Death,” she says, speaking softly. “At a water point, in the sand and the heat, a Somali woman with a small child in one hand, empty pots in the other, doesn’t look at us and takes the water into the pot and the little boy drinks it. The water was for livestock. That bothers me a lot. Children in Ukraine who are frightened by the sirens and the explosions, that bothers me. All of these things are fundamentally, morally unacceptable.”
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The bunker functions as an emergency office; it is equipped with a generator, desks, sofas, internet, a kettle and yoga mats. The ceilings are low. I am 6-foot-5 and need to slouch to reach a chair. It is chilly in the hole. Ms. Brown is wrapped in a winter vest and coat and sits on a sofa. Nearby, half a dozen UN employees, equally bundled up, tap quietly on computers. We are all on edge.
At 9:35 a.m., we hear the distinct sound of an explosion, and the lights flicker. Seconds later, the generator kicks in, and the bunker is back in operation as if nothing had happened.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Ms. Brown the UN’s resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Ukraine in late July. “Who could say no to this job?” she says. “Ukraine is the challenge of our generation.”
Denise Brown, Deputy Country Director at World Food Programme Marianne Ward and Ukraine's Infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov attend a news briefing after restarting grain export, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine. Yuzhne, Odesa region, Ukraine August 14, 2022.VALENTYN OGIRENKO/Reuters
She moved to Kyiv in August and oversees some 2,000 employees across 20 or so agencies, including her long-time employer the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF and UNHCR, the refugee agency. The humanitarian budget of the UN and national and international NGOs for Ukraine this year is US$4-billion, of which US$3.2-billion has been raised.
When Russian cruise missiles or Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones are not targeting Kyiv, Ms. Brown’s life is refreshingly normal compared with that of her previous field postings, where she lived under constant protection. In Kyiv, she walks to work from a nearby apartment. “I have no close protection,” she says. “I exercise a lot and I walk every morning in the dark for about 40 minutes.”
A glance at her resumé shows why she was the logical choice to head up one of the UN’s biggest-ever humanitarian missions. She has almost three decades of experience in humanitarian, development and recovery programs in Africa, Central and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, as well as holding senior administration jobs in New York and Rome, where WFP is based.
She was born in Vancouver, where she still has an apartment, one of three properties she owns (the others are in Paris and the South of France). Her father disappeared when she was four, and she and her four siblings were raised by their mother, Sharon, who worked as a secretary and lifeguard and had a sense of adventure – she was a recreational scuba diver. Ms. Brown studied psychology at the University of British Columbia and has a master’s degree in child development from Indiana’s Purdue University.
After graduation, she joined her then-partner in Cambodia. He worked for the UN’s first peacekeeping mission in that country, and she landed at a French humanitarian charity, Enfants & Développement. From that point, there was no looking back.
Denise Brown, the U.N. Resident Coordinator in Ukraine, speaks during a meeting at the U.N. Security Council on the ongoing war in Ukraine on October 21, 2022 at U.N. Headquarters in New York City.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
“Was there a moment – ping! – where you say this is it? Or do you start something and it keeps going, and end up in Haiti, then Iraq, then all of a sudden it makes sense the way you are evolving?” she says. “My life would have been completely different if I had stayed behind and not joined my partner in Cambodia. I enjoyed being in a completely different environment. I loved the feeling of discovery.”
In Haiti she worked for various charities, focusing on research and program development, then went to Iraq, where she joined WFP – her first UN job. There, she was part of the team that monitored the oil-for-food program.
After Iraq, her whirlwind career put her in Pakistan, where she covered Afghanistan. With a team, she negotiated with the Taliban to set up 20 WFP-subsidized bakeries run by women for women – no easy task, since the Taliban almost never allowed women to work.
From 2002 to 2009, she was based in Kenya and Somalia. She worked with Somali refugees who had fled to Kenya, after which WFP shifted gears to keep Kenyans alive during the massive droughts that hit the country. “They were moving and were climate refugees, though we did not call them that at the time,” she says. “Back then, we didn’t see it connected to other droughts. This was the beginning of a monumental change in climate and agriculture.”
In Somalia, three of her WFP employees were abducted and murdered. “I knew them very well,” she says. After that, she “pushed pause” and left for New York.
She was soon back in the field, based in Niger, the site of another severe drought, then Senegal, where she covered 20 countries in West Africa, and Rome. In the three years before she moved to Ukraine, she was the deputy special representative for the UN’s enormous peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic.
Denise Brown, at the UN HQ shelter during air raid alert. Kyiv, Ukraine on Dec. 16, 2022.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
During most of the time she was in the field, she was raising three boys, who lived wherever she lived, except for Iraq. How did she manage that?
“When we lived in Kenya, I would leave early in the morning, fly to Mogadishu [the Somali capital], fly back at night to Nairobi,” she says. “One time, one of my sons, who was 14 at the time, was waiting for me in the doorway. He said, ‘Mom, there is nothing to eat. You go to feed the children of Somalia and you are not feeding your own children.’ That is what it was like.”
In Ukraine, the UN is winterizing homes and schools that have been damaged by shelling, feeding the hungry, installing generators to keep hospitals going and providing medicine, shelter and psychological support to people liberated during the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The work has not been easy, partly because the UN has been unable to receive permission from the Russian military to enter occupied territories. Also, the UN’s work with local NGOs and volunteer organizations has not always gone smoothly.
“That has not been our shining glory,” Ms. Brown says, referring to the Ukrainian groups that do an enormous amount of the relief work. “There have been tensions. The international humanitarian community comes in very fast, with big numbers, lots of people and lots of arrogance, and that doesn’t align with all the actors. One of my major priorities is to realign our partnerships.”
In a report published in June, the United Kingdom Humanitarian Hub noted that international agencies in general seemed unprepared for the invasion and the misery it would trigger. Some of the Ukrainian NGOs it interviewed “expressed surprise and disappointment” at the initial, slow response of the UN.
Ms. Brown expects to be in Ukraine until the war ends. She will admit to being “tired” but vows to press on. Her moral outrage is driving her.
“On Oct. 10, as I was sitting in my office, there were explosions less than a kilometre away as parents were taking their children to school, and one of the missiles lands in the playground,” she says. “In terms of humanitarian response, Ukraine will go down in history as one of the biggest and most difficult. It is professional and emotional for me. I want to make my small contribution to alleviate the suffering of the people of Ukraine.”