Cognoscenti6%
Face-to-face encounters impose a moral responsibility 56%
By Sasha Chanoff0%
7/17/2026, 5:09:28 AM
Keywords: Refugees, Humanitarianism, Moral Responsibility, Empathy, Decision Making, Drc, Congo, Immigration
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Anecdotal, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 17.1% saturation with 161 hits. Analysis detected 1,173 faulty-reasoning hits from 941 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 53.3% and a BS Rank of 56% (9,482 of 21,171 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 55.20% of the article peer group.
Are we or are we not humanitarians?
In 2000, I was sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo on a refugee evacuation mission.
My boss handed me a list of 112 names and clear orders: Hire armed guards, secure buses, charter a plane and get massacre survivors from a safe haven to the airport.
One directive stood above all: Don’t take anyone not on the list.
Any deviation could jeopardize the mission.
My assignment was a last-ditch effort that the U.S. government had hired my employer — the International Organization for Migration at the time — to undertake.
Anyone we evacuated would have a chance to come to the United States through the refugee resettlement program.
But with the Congo at war, the odds of getting people out were slim.
When my colleague Sheikha Ali, a senior operations official, and I arrived at the safe haven, a two-acre compound away from active conflict, we found the 112 people on our list.
We registered them and told them we would fly out in a few days.
As we were about to leave, a humanitarian aid worker urged us to see a group of new arrivals in a nearby tent.
I said our list was closed — we couldn’t meet or take anyone else.
But my colleague Sheikha insisted on taking a look, and I followed.
Inside were 32 widows and orphans — traumatized and emaciated.
Sheikha leaned down to a young boy holding what looked like a doll and asked its name.
Suddenly, the doll’s eyes opened.
It was a tiny infant, barely alive.
The aid worker told us they had escaped a prison camp where people from their tribe were being executed.
He didn’t know how they had survived.
There was a basic human instinct — grounded in empathy — that made it clear we had to find a way to act.
That night, Sheikha and I argued.
She said we had to try to take them.
I said we couldn’t risk the lives of the people on our list.
But as we argued, I thought of my own family background — my great-grandmother fled pogroms in Russia, escaped to the U.S., lost her husband and raised four children.
What if someone hadn’t been there in her time of greatest need?
After hours of going back and forth, Sheikha said quietly, “Sasha, are we or are we not humanitarians?”
That ended the debate.
We called our boss and told him what we intended to do.
He warned us, angrily, that the entire mission could fail — but said if we secured the U.S.
Ambassador’s approval, we could proceed.
(We did so.)
On the morning of the flight, we got everyone to the airport.
Then Congolese immigration officials stopped us.
Everything we had feared might happen was happening.
We weren’t going to get anyone out, I thought.
They’ll all die here.
Sheikha went to plead our case.
After what felt like an eternity, the head official nodded, allowing us to board the plane.
We left, with all 142 refugees, those on our list and those from the tent.
After thorough vetting, all of them eventually came to the United States.
That tiny, wasted infant graduated from college a few years ago.
Others became citizens, built families, and contributed to their communities.
The eldest brother of one of those families — who escaped separately and reunited with them in the U.S. — went on to work in finance at Charles Schwab, and then started his own healthcare company.
I’ve often wondered: Did we make the right choice?
Utilitarian logic might suggest we should have left the 32 behind to protect the 112.
But something else took hold.
The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who was influenced by the Holocaust, wrote that “face-to-face” encounters impose a moral responsibility.
I felt that viscerally.
I couldn’t turn away.
There was a basic human instinct — grounded in empathy — that made it clear we had to find a way to act.
My choice all those years ago gave me insight into my deepest-held values.
It shaped my life.
I founded an organization, RefugePoint, to support overlooked refugees, and wrote a book, “From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decisions.”
In the end, three things I’ve come to think of as lessons helped me answer Sheikha’s question, “Are we or are we not humanitarians?”
And perhaps they can help you, too.
First, open your eyes: Confronting a human dilemma first-hand — in my case stepping into that tent — will make you fully aware.
Right now in the United States, the Trump administration is arresting and detaining legally admitted, law-abiding refugees, people like those we evacuated.
But human dilemmas take countless forms.
Each of us will face our own tent.
Second, know yourself: What does your gut — your unique background and experience — tell you to do?
Third, take courage: Do what you feel is right, even if there’s a risk.
This kind of action can reveal who you are at your core.
It can even change your life.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, by the end of 2025, some 117.8 million people — about 1 in every 70 people globally — have been displaced by persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations.
At some point, each of us will be confronted with the question: are we or are we not humanitarians?
Editor's note: Show of Force, a media company, produced a 10-minute documentary version of this story in 2016, as part of a multi-platform initiative about the global refugee crisis called "Humanity on the Move."
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100%flagged-word coverageUN Refugee Agency
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