Mary Diaz, headed agency on world's refugees

For 10 years, Mary F. Diaz traveled to the world's trouble spots, dodging minefields, tsetse flies, lions, and wars on her mission to help refugee women and children reclaim their lives.

As executive director of the New York-based Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Ms. Diaz went on fact-finding missions to places such as Serbia, Angola, Rwanda, Nepal, Pakistan, Haiti, and South America to talk to the displaced women and children firsthand.

On her return to the United States, she would plead their cases before the United Nations and lobby lawmakers and relief agencies to improve their conditions. When they needed asylum in this country, she fought for that, as well. Ms. Diaz, 43, who formerly worked in Boston, died Feb. 12 of pancreatic cancer at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. "Mary was passionate about her work and was dedicating her life to it," said the commission spokeswoman, Diana Quick.

She often got results, Quick said. After Ms. Diaz's report on her trip to Bosnia, the Clinton administration provided a fund for its women refugees. During a visit to Tanzania, she got the rules changed to allow Burundian women as well as men to distribute food to fellow refugees -- and, as a result, many women got food.

After a visit to Afghanistan in 2002, Ms. Diaz initiated a fund for programs for Afghan women.

"Since Mary became executive director," Quick said, "the commission has grown from a small organization with a staff of four and a budget of $425,000 to one with more than 20 staff and a budget of $4 million."

Ms. Diaz's death, said Ruud Lubbers, who heads the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, "left a void in the refugee and humanitarian world, where she touched many lives."

In Boston, where Ms. Diaz worked for Catholic Charities from 1984 to 1994, the last six years as its director of refugee and immigration services, Judith Whitmarsh of Catholic Charities described her as "the kindest and most compassionate person I've known."

Whitmarsh, a former program coordinator of the state Office for Refugees and Immigrants, said Ms. Diaz was "particularly concerned with people who were disenfranchised.

"When new immigrants arrived at the airport, Mary would always make sure there was a friendly face to greet them and that there would be some cultural orientation for them. If they had experienced trauma, there would be help. If they didn't know English, she got them into classes so they could find jobs." Ms. Diaz became executive director of the Women's Commission, a nongovernmental organization, in 1994, five years after it was founded by actress Liv Ullman.

Ms. Diaz also gave eloquent and poignant speeches about the plight of refugee women and children to potential donors. "Mary was very strong in a very quiet way," Quick said. In an address in Minneapolis in 2002, seeking support for the reproductive health care and rights of adolescents in refugee settings and war zones, Ms. Diaz told the story of Marion, a 14-year-old girl she had met in Sierra Leone.

"Marion was living with her family near Freetown when rebels forced their way into her home and demanded her mother surrender one of the children," Ms. Diaz said in her speech. "When her mother refused, the rebels threatened to kill everyone in the house. Her mother pointed to Marion.

"Marion was gang-raped almost immediately," Ms. Diaz said, "but told she had to walk with the rebels or be shot. She lived with different commanders as a slave for more than two years, escaping one day when she was given permission to go to the market. She gave birth to a baby a year after being abducted." Marion developed serious health problems that couldn't be addressed in Sierra Leone, Ms. Diaz said. She had a chance to go home, but her mother wouldn't take her back.

Ms. Diaz believed the international community had a responsibility to help children like Marion.

Ms. Diaz was born in Newport News, Va. Tom Ferguson of New York City, her longtime partner, said her desire to serve others came naturally. Her late father, from the Philippines, was a doctor; her mother is a nurse. Two brothers are doctors. One sister is a teacher, another a librarian.

Ms. Diaz grew up in Pottstown, Pa. After high school, she graduated from Brown University in 1982, with a major in international relations. She worked briefly for a Philadelphia television station and then came to Boston, where she studied for a master's degree in international education at Harvard University, which she earned in 1988. Four years later, while she was at Catholic Charities, a group of 112 Haitian children got separated from their parents en route to refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay. They ended up in Boston, under Ms. Diaz's care. First, she met the children at the airport, Ferguson said, then took them all for lunch at Buzzy's Fabulous Roast Beef and a swim in a pool before reuniting them with their parents.

Ms. Diaz "left her mark wherever she went," Whitmarsh said. In addition to Ferguson, Ms. Diaz leaves her mother, Bertha of Pottstown, Pa.; two brothers, Philip of Columbus, Ohio, and Joseph of Barrington, R.I.; and two sisters, Theresa of Reading, Pa., and Bernadette of Oak Park, Ill.

A memorial service will be held tomorrow at 2 p.m. in The Church of the Ascension in New York City.