No choice but to flee

Why do parents let their children cross stormy seas in flimsy rubber boats? Why do they walk across sun-scorched deserts for days with their sons and daughters on their backs? Why leave home and all the routines of everyday life for an uncertain future far away?

Because that is safer than staying.

Right now, approximately 80 million people are displaced in the world. They have fled to another part of their own country or crossed a border to escape armed conflict, violence, persecution, a natural disaster, economic or political instability or a combination of these.

The majority of displaced people live in cities, but many of the millions of women, children and men live in camps, and for them, life can feel like it is on hold. They often lack access to things we take for granted in our lives: only half of refugee children go to school and few have access to reliable electricity, for example. What’s even worse, many remain in camps for years, or even generations, with limited opportunity to change their situation. They are people like you and me, with dreams, hopes and only one life to live. Luck is the thing that divides us from one another.