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Displaced people from the DR Congo gather in a bus upon their arrival in Bugarama, Rwanda, on December 5, 2025 [AFP]
Until every child is in school, no one in the world can be truly safe
The day war erupts, a child learns a different kind of lesson — which road is safe, which silence means run, how much can be carried and what must be left behind. Somewhere in Sudan or eastern Congo this year, a girl folded that knowledge into a small bag and walked away from a classroom she may never enter again. She did not call it courage. To her, it was simply the morning she had to leave.
This is the quiet bravery that World Refugee Day was made to honour. The 2026 theme, 'Until Everyone Is Safe,' arrives heavy with meaning: We are marking 75 years since the 1951 Refugee Convention, the promise the world made that no one fleeing war should ever face it alone. Refugee Week names the same spirit in a single word — Courage. For a displaced child, courage is not a slogan. It is the conscious decision to begin again, in a new language, an unfamiliar place, and ask the basic childhood question: When can I go back to school?
