[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 23 (Friday, February 27, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S1890]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                     IN MEMORY OF MARY FRANCES DIAZ

 Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I would like to set aside a moment 
to reflect on the life of Ms. Mary Frances Diaz upon her passing in 
February. Mary was a woman who made a remarkable contribution toward 
improving the lives of refugee women, children, and adolescents around 
the world. She was a truly selfless woman who dedicated her life to 
others.
  Mary was born in Newport News, VA. She spent her childhood in 
Pottstown, PA, before going to Brown University, where she graduated 
with a major in international relations in 1982. After working for 
several years at WPVI television news station in Philadelphia, she 
returned to school and received a master's degree in international 
education from Harvard University in 1988.
  But Mary's passion and life mission was refugees. While she was still 
at Harvard she began working for Catholic Charities in Boston, and upon 
graduation became director of refugee and immigration services there.
  In 1994, at the age of 33, Mary became executive director of the 
Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, an organization that 
helps some of the most vulnerable people on Earth. For 10 years, Mary 
traveled to the world's trouble spots, dodging minefields, tsetse 
flies, and wars on her mission to help refugee women and children 
reclaim their lives. She went on fact-finding missions to places such 
as Serbia, Angola, Rwanda, Nepal, Pakistan, Haiti, and Colombia to talk 
to uprooted women and children firsthand.
  Back in the United States and in Geneva, she would plead their cases 
before the United Nations and lobby lawmakers and relief agencies to 
improve their conditions. She also fought for the rights of people 
claiming asylum in the United States.
  Her advocacy led to concrete results. After she reported on the 
situation in Bosnia, the Clinton administration provided a fund to help 
refugee women rebuild their lives. During a visit to Tanzania, she got 
the rules changed to allow Burundian women as well as men to distribute 
food to fellow refugees. As a result, many more women and their 
children got their food rations. After a visit to Afghanistan in 2002, 
Mary initiated a fund for programs for Afghan women.
  Under Mary's leadership, the Women's Commission grew from a small 
organization with a staff of 4 and a budget of $425,000 to one with 
more than 20 staff and a budget of $4 million. She believed the 
international community had a responsibility to help women and children 
who had been uprooted by war and persecution, and in her quiet, elegant 
way, used her eloquence and strong persuasive powers to persuade policy 
makers to change policies and programs.
  Mary, who was 43 years old, died of pancreatic cancer. She leaves 
behind her longtime partner, Tom Ferguson of New York City; her mother, 
Bertha Diaz of Pottstown, PA; two brothers, Dr. Philip Diaz of 
Columbus, OH, and Dr. Joseph Diaz of Barrington, RI; and two sisters, 
Theresa Diaz of Reading, PA, and Bernadette Diaz of Oak Park, IL. She 
also leaves behind innumerable friends and colleagues.
  Mary's legacy will live on in the lives of the refugees around the 
world whose lives she helped improve and in the work of the Women's 
Commission for Refugee Women and Children. I rise today to commemorate 
Mary Diaz, to celebrate her too-short life and to offer her family, 
friends, and colleagues our support. She will be sorely missed.

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