Arthur C. Helton, a refugee advocate and lawyer, died in the August 19 bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Helton, who founded and directed OSI’s Forced Migration Project from 1994 to 1999, was among 21 people killed in the bombing. He was in Iraq's capital to meet with UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, who also died in the terrorist attack.
As director of the Forced Migration Project, Helton advocated on behalf of refugees throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, focusing particularly on Russia and countries in the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus. He was the author of numerous publications outlining the legal frameworks for refugee protection and exhorting national governments and international organizations to recognize and guarantee the human rights of refugees and internally displaced persons. OSI President Aryeh Neier called Helton’s death “a great loss both on a professional and a personal level.”
Prior to joining OSI, Helton had spent more than a decade working on refugee issues, including groundbreaking work in the 1980s with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. While there, he helped politically and economically oppressed Haitians win asylum in the United States. Since leaving OSI, Helton had worked at the Council on Foreign Relations, most recently as a program director of peace and conflict studies and senior fellow for refugee studies and preventive action.
Helton was a prolific writer on refugee issues throughout his career. Most recently, in 2002, he published The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century (Oxford University Press), in which he discussed refugee crises in the 1990s and proposed new strategies and models for improving displaced persons’ lives.