By Carlos Haag, FSWC Educator

A Day to Remember Those Who Were Forced to Flee

“Refugees are not numbers; they are people who have faces, names, and stories and need to be treated as such,” said the late Pope Francis in April 2016 in Greece.”

On June 20, World Refugee Day is a designated time to honour the courage and resilience of displaced individuals — and to reflect on what it means to seek safety.

Refugees are not a new phenomenon in. In the late 1930s, in the face of Nazi persecution, about 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were sent to safety in Britain through the Kindertransport rescue operation. After the Vietnam War, more than a million Vietnamese "boat people" risked everything to flee communist rule. More recently, millions of Syrians crossed borders to escape civil war, while Ukrainian families, uprooted by Russia’s 2022 invasion, have sought refuge across Europe and North America. In Sudan, ongoing violence has displaced millions of people in a humanitarian crisis that rarely makes headlines.

These are not just movements of people; they are stories of survival. Refugees leave behind homes, schools, careers and sometimes loved ones. They carry hope with them: the hope for safety, dignity and a chance to begin again.

World Refugee Day was established by the United Nations in 2001 to commemorate the 1951 Refugee Convention — a landmark agreement created after the Holocaust to protect people fleeing persecution. It affirms that seeking asylum is a human right and that the world has a shared responsibility to offer protection.

This day invites students to ask important questions: What drives people to flee? How should we respond? And how can we create space for both memory and action?

Behind every statistic lies a name, a face and a story. On June 20, we remember — and we listen.