How to help refugees rebuild their world

Let’s help refugees thrive, not just survive

So I started working

with refugees because I wanted

to make a difference,

and making a difference starts

with telling their stories.

So when I meet refugees,

I always ask them questions.

Who bombed your house?

Who killed your son?

Did the rest of your family make it out alive?

How are you coping

in your life in exile?

But there's one question that always seems to me

to be most revealing, and that is:

What did you take?

What was that most important thing

that you had to take with you

when the bombs were exploding in your town,

and the armed gangs were approaching your house?

A Syrian refugee boy I know

told me that he didn't hesitate

when his life was in imminent danger.

He took his high school diploma,

and later he told me why.

He said, "I took my high school diploma

because my life depended on it."

And he would risk his life to get that diploma.

On his way to school, he would dodge snipers.

His classroom sometimes shook

with the sound of bombs and shelling,

and his mother told me,

"Every day, I would say to him every morning,

'Honey, please don't go to school.'"

And when he insisted, she said,

"I would hug him as if it were for the last time."

But he said to his mother,

"We're all afraid,

but our determination to graduate

is stronger than our fear."

But one day, the family got terrible news.

Hani's aunt, his uncle and his cousin

were murdered in their homes for refusing

to leave their house.

Their throats were slit.

It was time to flee.

They left that day, right away, in their car,

Hani hidden in the back because they were facing

checkpoints of menacing soldiers.

And they would cross the border into Lebanon,

where they would find peace.

But they would begin a life of grueling hardship

and monotony.

They had no choice but to build a shack

on the side of a muddy field,

and this is Hani's brother Ashraf,

who plays outside.

And that day, they joined

the biggest population of refugees in the world,

in a country, Lebanon, that is tiny.

It only has four million citizens,

and there are one million Syrian refugees living there.

There's not a town, a city or a village

that is not host to Syrian refugees.

This is generosity and humanity

that is remarkable.

Think about it this way, proportionately.

It would be as if

the entire population of Germany,

80 million people,

would flee to the United States in just three years.

Half of the entire population of Syria

is now uprooted,

most of them inside the country.

Six and a half million people

have fled for their lives.

Over and well over three million people

have crossed the borders

and have found sanctuary
in the neighboring countries,

and only a small proportion, as you see,

have moved on to Europe.

What I find most worrying

is that half of all Syrian refugees are children.

I took this picture of this little girl.

It was just two hours after she had arrived

after a long trek from Syria into Jordan.

And most troubling of all

is that only 20 percent of
Syrian refugee children

are in school in Lebanon.

And yet, Syrian refugee children,

all refugee children tell us

education is the most important thing in their lives.

Why? Because it allows them to think of their future

rather than the nightmare of their past.

It allows them to think of hope rather than hatred.

I'm reminded of a recent visit I took

to a Syrian refugee camp in northern Iraq,

and I met this girl,

and I thought, "She's beautiful,"

and I went up to her and asked her,

"Can I take your picture?"

And she said yes,

but she refused to smile.

I think she couldn't,

because I think she must realize that she represents

a lost generation of Syrian refugee children,

a generation isolated and frustrated.

And yet, look at what they fled:

utter destruction,

buildings, industries, schools, roads, homes.

Hani's home was also destroyed.

This will need to be rebuilt

by architects, by engineers, by electricians.

Communities will need teachers and lawyers

and politicians interested in reconciliation

and not revenge.

Shouldn't this be rebuilt

by the people with the largest stake,

the societies in exile, the refugees?

Refugees have a lot of time

to prepare for their return.

You might imagine that being a refugee

is just a temporary state.

Well far from it.

With wars going on and on,

the average time a refugee will spend in exile

is 17 years.

Hani was into his second year in limbo

when I went to visit him recently,

and we conducted our entire conversation in English,

which he confessed to me he learned

from reading all of Dan Brown's novels

and from listening to American rap.

We also spent some nice moments of laughter

and fun with his beloved brother Ashraf.

But I'll never forget what he told me

when we ended our conversation that day.

He said to me,

"If I am not a student, I am nothing."

Hani is one of 50 million people

uprooted in this world today.

Never since World War II

have so many people been forcibly displaced.

So while we're making sweeping progress

in human health,

in technology, in education and design,

we are doing dangerously little

to help the victims

and we are doing far too little

to stop and prevent

the wars that are driving them from their homes.

And there are more and more victims.

Every day, on average,

by the end of this day,

32,000 people will be forcibly displaced

from their homes —

32,000 people.

They flee across borders like this one.

We captured this on the Syrian border to Jordan,

and this is a typical day.

Or they flee on unseaworthy and overcrowded boats,

risking their lives in this case

just to reach safety in Europe.

This Syrian young man

survived one of these boats that capsized —

most of the people drowned —

and he told us,

"Syrians are just looking for a quiet place

where nobody hurts you,

where nobody humiliates you,

and where nobody kills you."

Well, I think that should be the minimum.

How about a place of healing,

of learning,

and even opportunity?

Americans and Europeans

have the impression that proportionally

huge numbers of refugees are coming

to their country,

but the reality is

that 86 percent, the vast majority of refugees,

are living in the developing world,

in countries struggling with their own insecurity,

with their own issues of helping their own populations

and poverty.

So wealthy countries in the world should recognize

the humanity and the generosity of the countries

that are hosting so many refugees.

And all countries should make sure that no one

fleeing war and persecution

arrives at a closed border.

(Applause)

Thank you.

But there is something more that we can do

than just simply helping refugees survive.

We can help them thrive.

We should think of refugee camps and communities

as more than just temporary population centers

where people languish

waiting for the war to end.

Rather, as centers of excellence,

where refugees can triumph over their trauma

and train for the day that they can go home

as agents of positive change

and social transformation.

It makes so much sense,

but I'm reminded of the terrible war in Somalia

that has been raging on for 22 years.

And imagine living in this camp.

I visited this camp.

It's in Djibouti, neighboring Somalia,

and it was so remote

that we had to take a helicopter to fly there.

It was dusty and it was terribly hot.

And we went to visit a school

and started talking to the children,

and then I saw this girl across the room

who looked to me to be the same age

as my own daughter, and I went up and talked to her.

And I asked her the questions

that grown-ups ask kids,

like, "What is your favorite subject?"

and, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

And this is when her face turned blank,

and she said to me,

"I have no future.

My schooling days are over."

And I thought, there must be some misunderstanding,

so I turned to my colleague

and she confirmed to me

there is no funding for secondary education

in this camp.

And how I wished at that moment

that I could say to her,

"We will build you a school."

And I also thought, what a waste.

She should be and she is

the future of Somalia.

A boy named Jacob Atem

had a different chance, but not before he experienced

terribly tragedy.

He watched — this is in Sudan —

as his village — he was only seven years old —

burned to the ground, and he learned

that his mother and his father

and his entire family

were killed that day.

Only his cousin survived, and the two of them

walked for seven months —

this is boys like him —

chased and pursued by wild
animals and armed gangs,

and they finally made it to refugee camps

where they found safety,

and he would spend the next seven years

in Kenya in a refugee camp.

But his life changed

when he got the chance to be resettled

to the United States,

and he found love in a foster family

and he was able to go to school,

and he wanted me to share with you

this proud moment

when he graduated from university.

(Applause)

I spoke to him on Skype the other day,

and he was in his new university in Florida

pursuing his Ph.D. in public health,

and he proudly told me how he was able to raise

enough funds from the American public

to establish a health clinic back in his village

back home.

So I want to take you back to Hani.

When I told him I was going to have the chance

to speak to you here on the TED stage,

he allowed me to read you a poem

that he sent in an email to me.

He wrote:

"I miss myself,

my friends,

times of reading novels or writing poems,

birds and tea in the morning.

My room, my books, myself,

and everything that was making me smile.

Oh, oh, I had so many dreams

that were about to be realized."

So here is my point:

Not investing in refugees

is a huge missed opportunity.

Leave them abandoned,

and they risk exploitation and abuse,

and leave them unskilled and uneducated,

and delay by years the return

to peace and prosperity in their countries.

I believe how we treat the uprooted

will shape the future of our world.

The victims of war can hold the keys

to lasting peace,

and it's the refugees

who can stop the cycle of violence.

Hani is at a tipping point.

We would love to help him go to university

and to become an engineer,

but our funds are prioritized for the basics in life:

tents and blankets and mattresses and kitchen sets,

food rations and a bit of medicine.

University is a luxury.

But leave him to languish in this muddy field,

and he will become a member

of a lost generation.

Hani's story is a tragedy,

but it doesn't have to end that way.

Thank you.

(Applause)