The Coronavirus pandemic has led countries to shutter its borders, and yet, we know that the virus is blind to borders. Borders have long been the final frontier for people fleeing war, persecution, climate change and more. 

And once again, when a new global challenge has tested our resolve, it’s the resiliency of refugees that shines through as an example for us all. 

This word resiliency gets thrown around a lot in the context of refugees, but it’s apt. How else do you describe people who, contrary to the narrative, flee their countries as a last resort, knowing that they will likely live in exile for the rest of time? 

How else do you describe people who, even while in exile, having almost nothing, being dependent on humanitarian aid for just about everything, share the meager resources they have with you, the foreigner, in their adopted homeland, when you find yourself living in a refugee camp, lost, scared, lonely and isolated, early in your career as an aid worker?

That’s exactly what I learned first-hand when I lived in northern Ethiopia in one of my first field deployments. It was one of the most remote locations in which I have ever lived. To say at times it was like stepping back in time a few thousand years would not be inaccurate. 

And because it was so remote, food supply chains were scant. Telecommunications were spotty at best. The Internet was nonexistent. Roads were a suggestion. Indoor plumbing hadn’t been invented yet. Camels and donkeys were in plentiful supply. 

In these hardships, it’s refugees who took care of me. Nurtured me physically and emotionally. A Fanta and sweets found miraculously at my doorstep, delivered by a refugee in one of my programs, on a particularly hard day. 

Birthday cakes baked by some miracle on a makeshift firewood stove still remain a mystery to me. 

Invitations to visit that I would keep passing up because I knew they would share their food rations with me, when they barely had enough to feed themselves. 

Yes, it was generosity on an unbelievable scale, but it was their resiliency of spirit that left its indelible mark. 

Pandemic Resiliency

The COVID-19 pandemic has been no different. When borders shut down, it left supply chains disrupted, curfews instilled, restrictions imposed and refugees impacted. 

And once again, refugees stepped up. 

In Lebanon, 1 million Syrian refugees and nearly half a million Palestine refugees live in an informal context with rights and access to registration, protection, healthcare, education and other basic rights limited and tenuous at best. 

Surveillance, curfews and lack of registration are just some of the impediments impacting refugee access to COVID-19 medical treatment, and it’s in these conditions, that refugees are stepping up in their own communities by translating COVID-19 health information into Arabic in camps, raising awareness on social media, and collecting donations and distributing relief.

In Uganda, home to 1.4 million refugees, refugee-led organizations are responding in both camps and cities. In the Nakivale Settlement, the Wakati Foundation is employing refugees to sew and distribute masks, while also raising community awareness about the virus. In Arua, the Global Society Initiative for Peace and Democracy is conducting hygiene and sanitation information campaigns to slow the spread of the virus. UNHCR acknowledges its struggle to meet  the needs of urban refugees and so again, refugee-led organization Hope for Children and Women Victims of Violence is filling critical gaps through distribution of food and soap to over 400 refugees, while another refugee-led organization is distributing food and soap to 200 vulnerable households. 

Similar responses are taking place in Nairobi, Kenya in the refugee-crowded Eastleigh neighborhood. 

Climate Displacement Resiliency

Our next “global virus challenge” is climate change. And with that, too, it is refugees and migrants who will be challenged to the extreme and will also rise to that challenge. 

We’re already seeing that resolve tested in the asylum-seekers held in detention centers who are fleeing violence in their Central American countries, but also climate change.

Naysayers may call it poverty and they would not be wrong. It is poverty, but it is poverty fueled by food insecurity, fueled by drought, fueled by climate change and climate variability. 

Just as some are in denial about COVID and robust COVID response, the same holds true for climate change, which regardless of the modeling and doomsday year 2050 displacement numbers, we know is deeply impacting some of the poorest and most marginalized populations in the world right now who had little to do with contributing to global warming in the first place. 

East Africa, just as challenged by COVID-19, is fighting a triple crisis with floods sweeping across the region and a second round of crop-destroying locusts looming in a “decade of back-to-back-crises” linked to climate change. Just in Somalia, 1 million people have been impacted and 400,000 displaced, while in Kenya, at least 40,000 are displaced by floods. All this while Somalia already deals with drought, war, food insecurity and rising internal displacement  and Kenya already hosts a record number of refugees. 

Pakistan faces the same locust battle expected to deeply impact food security, while dealing with surging COVID-19 cases and hosting 1.4 million Afghan refugees within its borders. 

There are 79.5 million people forcibly displaced in the world today - the highest number yet again since World War II - 26 million of whom are refugees. Developing countries host more than 85% of the world’s refugee population, and some of the worst impacts of the Coronavirus will be in the developing world. 

The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit “Grand Bargain” recognized people affected by crises as first responders, and yet, these organizations remain on the periphery of the humanitarian system that still enforces a separation between the provider and the beneficiary because of stringent standards and compliance that hitherto have not allowed these organizations an opportunity. As pointed out by advocates, the unique challenges imposed by the novel coronavirus may prove an opportunity to examine the asymmetry within the system and highlight the valuable role played by refugee-led organizations to ensure their contribution is recognized by UN agencies and donor governments.

This World Refugee Day, let’s not just honor refugee resilience. Let’s do right by them and safeguard the sacred oaths of protection the term ‘refugee’ is meant to uphold. That is true in terms of entry and inclusion in the entire process and response, but also in terms of protection from all the threats of forcible displacement.