Schell Center Spotlight: Robina Postgraduate Fellow Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat ’19

Since July, Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat ’19 has been working as a social protection officer at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Regional Office in Buenos Aires, supported by the Robina Post-Graduate Fellowship in International Human Rights. In this role, Olaizola is working to improve refugee social integration by promoting policies that facilitate refugees’ access to welfare and employment systems at the local, national and regional levels.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Olaizola points to her triple citizenship — in Venezuela, Poland, and the United States — as well as her personal migration story as having sparked her interest in immigration law and human rights work. Her triple citizenship, she said, has given her the privilege of increased freedom of movement and access to opportunities. However, it has also “called [her] attention to and made [her] sensitive to” flaws in the international system. The system boasts inter-connectedness while allowing arbitrary barriers — based on nationality or lack thereof — to persist, she says.

Between 2014 and 2016, Olaizola encountered the problem of statelessness firsthand in Myanmar, where she conducted research in regions marred by ethnic conflict and internal displacement. After observing the negative impact of lack of nationality on people’s claim to basic rights and sense of dignity, Olaizola was moved to seek solutions.

As a student at Yale Law School, Olaizola served as a Legal Director of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Schell Center Student Director, and member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. Entering law school, Olaizola was “stubbornly clear” that she wanted to conduct human rights work. Knowing she wanted to work in migration, her coursework focused on international and immigration law.

Olaizola is a Robina Fellow — a title that is a “point of pride” to her. The fellowship has provided her with the support to move securely through Argentina and conduct meaningful human rights work abroad. Because the fellowship project is “not predetermined,” Olaizola says she has been able to design her work around the issues that she is passionate about and that she sees as having a “a real need” for action. 

In her fellowship year, her goals have primarily been to reconnect with her home region, which she left almost two decades ago, and to help address the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis that has preoccupied her deeply over the past few years. In Argentina, she has found a balance between working on policy development, which, she says, has the potential for large-scale impact, and keeping close contact with affected populations, without which it is often easy to “lose sight of the underlying purpose.”

As a social protection officer at the UNHCR Regional Office in Buenos Aires, she focuses on helping refugees access social protection programs. Argentina, like several countries in Latin America, has social assistance programs aimed at providing a floor of socioeconomic protection to the most vulnerable sectors in society, Olaizola said. However, many refugees cannot access these programs due to prerequisites like national identification cards and years of residency in the country. Olaizola’s job is to convince national and local authorities of the need to eliminate these barriers of entry for refugees.

According to Olaizola, most refugees with whom she comes into contact are Venezuelan, but she also helps refugees that hail from all over Latin America, as well as Africa and the Middle East. She has learned that in Latin America, the definition of a refugee is broader than the international legal definition. Internationally, a refugee is a person fleeing persecution due to their nationality, political opinion, race, religion, or particular social group. However, many countries in Latin America have accepted and integrated into their domestic legal systems an expanded definition, stemming from the Cartagena Declaration. For this reason, most Venezuelans — who are forced to flee a situation of generalized violence, collapse of public order, and gross human rights violations — can be considered refugees by default.

One of Olaizola’s collaborative long-term projects is the design of an app that provides refugees with personalized information regarding social programs and resources available to them. The user-friendly digital platform would take into consideration a refugee’s family composition, legal status, and other factors to determine the welfare programs for which they are eligible.

Most recently, Olaizola accepted an ambitious assignment from her office, which aims to outline a legal and advocacy route to reforming the “Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH),” or “Universal Allocation per Child for Social Protection,” which is one of the largest social assistance programs in Latin America.

To qualify for this program, Olaizola explained, one must have a national ID card and three years of residence — two prerequisites that disqualify most asylum seekers and Venezuelan refugees. So far, she has met with members of different ministries including the Ministry of Health and Social Development and the Ministry of Production and Labour. While it is an “uphill battle” to “convince national authorities to support refugees when the [Argentinian] population is in dire need of economic help as well,” she finds studying the centers of power and crafting the best arguments to present to policymakers “fascinating.”

Olaizola describes her time working in Argentina as both an “eye-opening and harrowing experience.” With “everything in flames” in many Latin American communities, she is in a unique position to learn and act. Her most memorable interactions have been with Venezuelan refugees whose resilience despite their struggles has left her in awe and has allowed her to “come home happy” every day.