On the International Day of the Girl Child, let’s pledge to protect the safe space school provides girls in the East and Horn and Great Lakes region of Africa — and around the world.

By Clementine Nkweta-Salami

October 11 is the International Day of the Girl Child, a day that means a lot to me. For more than two decades, I have worked with refugees across Africa. …

Around the world, displaced and stateless people are taking action to halt climate change, achieve gender equity and solve other complex problems. The COVID-19 pandemic is not about to stop them.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted a set of goals to end poverty, eradicate inequality and halt or reverse the severe effects of climate change by 2030. These 17 goals — known collectively as the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs — commit the world’s leaders to acting now and leaving no one behind. The UN Secretary-General urges all sectors of society to contribute— including businesses, nonprofits and individuals — and recently declared this a Decade of Action.

At UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, we know that those most adversely affected by the world’s challenges are often best placed to discover and implement solutions. People forced to flee conflict or persecution, as well as those who are stateless, frequently lack access to quality education, health care and livelihoods — and the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated inequality. But many have discovered ways to farm sustainably, built thriving businesses and, more recently, designed solutions to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. …

The latest Education Report from UNHCR offers inspiring stories of refugees continuing their education despite the odds against them. Read and learn.

By Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Schools closed, exams cancelled: COVID-19 has played havoc with children’s education worldwide. According to UN figures, around 1.6 billion learners across the world, including millions of refugees, have had their education disrupted.

However, as so often when faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, the determination of refugees to secure life-changing educational opportunities has again come to the fore. …

The postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games gave Olympic runner and South Sudanese refugee Yiech Pur Biel an opportunity to reflect on his life story so far — and the chance to improve his time for 2021.

In this essay, Pur discusses training in America, where he will study and run cross country at university* this fall. He also talks about the three principles that guide his life, what sports taught him about how people respond to unspeakable trauma, and his new role as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

In 2005, when I was 10, armed groups attacked my village one day. We all fled into the bush and I became separated from my parents and siblings. I didn’t know it then, but I wouldn’t speak to my family again for more than 10 years. …

The principles under-pinning the Global Compact on Refugees provide the tools we need to respond to the impacts of the coronavirus on refugees and the communities that host them.

By Gillian Triggs

Just over a year before the novel coronavirus emerged, countries around the world came together to adopt the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) — a new framework for managing large movements of refugees more equitably among States.

It represented a political commitment of unprecedented force and a model for better international cooperation. …

The police brutality that sparked protests in the United States and beyond reminds some refugees of the bigotry they fled — and sometimes still encounter in places they now call home. Here are some of their voices.

When protests erupted in the United States over the killing of George Floyd, Pastor Yves Kalala vowed to lead his mostly white church in a village in Ontario, Canada, in tackling unconscious bias in its ranks.

Yves’ decision to broach the issue with his congregation and fellow pastors took courage. He grew up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and came to Canada in 2007 as a refugee. …

Closed borders and restrictions on movement pose unprecedented challenges to the way UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, responds to emergencies. Here are five lessons that Raouf Mazou, the agency’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, has learned as UNHCR supports efforts by displaced communities to confront the COVID-19 pandemic.

(1) Our preparations for a coronavirus outbreak in a crowded refugee camp are about to be tested.

The scenario that has kept us all awake at night is beginning to become reality as the first coronavirus cases in refugee camps emerge. We have spent several weeks preparing for this eventuality, working on building isolation and treatment facilities, strengthening health-care response, adapting the way we deliver services and assistance to ensure some level of social distancing — extremely difficult in a refugee camp or settlement — and reducing the number of times refugees need to gather by distributing relief items in advance and in larger quantities, such as shelter repair materials, soap and other hygiene products, and cooking fuel. …

Right now, someone is fleeing for their life because of their gender identity, sexual orientation or sex characteristics.

There are some 26 million refugees around the world who have fled war, violent conflict or persecution. Under international law, anyone with a well-founded fear of being persecuted based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group must be protected as a refugee.

Guidelines issued by the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, have considered people targeted because of their gender identity, sexual orientation or sex characteristics to be entitled to such protection.

Sometimes LGBTI refugees are victims of their government’s draconian laws. Other times they suffer at the hands of fellow citizens, or their own families — and their government stands idly by or even participates in the abuse. …