By Mya Trujillo
In just five years, there has been a significant rise in people forcibly displaced from their homes, surging from 81.5 million to 123.2 million since 2020, and as violence and persecution persists, 36.8 million individuals worldwide now live as refugees — having fled their countries to find solace in a peaceful territory.
As conflicts continue, advocacy organizations such as Noir United International (NUI) and creative consulting agency N&Y Creative Solutions, contend that it is critical to celebrate refugees’ courage and share their stories in order to humanize them, spread empathy and raise awareness about the global circumstance.
With June 20 recognized as World Refugee Day since 2001 — established by the United Nations in commemoration of the 1951 Refugee Convention — NUI and N&Y Creative Solutions organized an advocacy workshop on June 21 at Meridian Hill Park, featuring food, personal testimonies and art.
“Our goal is to really show people, even though you’re not from … some of these areas where there’s a lot of conflict, you can still use your voice locally in your community to educate others about it and then also just try to make an impact,” Macire Aribot Ashford, co-founder of NUI, told The Informer.
For Bertha Nibigira, founder of N&Y Creative Solutions, refugee advocacy hits especially close to home, as she spent most of her childhood in Tanzanian refugee camps. Her grandparents fled from their home country of Burundi to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) amid escalating conflicts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
When Nibigira was a toddler, her family left the DRC and went to Tanzania due to the onset of the First Congo War in 1996.
She and her family came to the United States around 2007, when Nibigira was 13 years old. They settled in Clarkston, Georgia, which has been nicknamed the “Ellis Island of the South,” as approximately 60,000 refugees have called it home since 1980.
“I could definitely feel, as a child, that there was a lot of hostility. That [we] were not welcomed and unwanted,” Nibigira told The Informer. “I would like for people to get to a point where the label doesn’t matter, and [they] recognize the human in another person.”
The DRC is still experiencing conflict and an extensive humanitarian crisis. Since 2022, constant violence has displaced 4.6 million people in the North and South Kivu provinces alone. Nibigira was born in South Kivu, an area that has been affected by conflict for the past 30 years. In addition, displacement is at risk of increasing, as 27 million people across the country require emergency humanitarian assistance.
“The emergency in the DRC is one of the most complex humanitarian crises in the world,” said the U.N. Refugee Agency. “Conditions for displaced people are worsening on a daily basis as attacks on sites for the internally displaced increase, resources run dry and many find themselves unable to meet their most urgent needs without humanitarian assistance.”
Advocates like Nibigira and Aribot Ashford emphasize shedding light on today’s refugee stories is particularly important as the Trump administration implemented an indefinite refugee ban and foreign aid freeze in January, which could potentially create greater hostility toward displaced communities seeking protection.
The administration also recently implemented a travel ban, restricting entry into the U.S. from 17 countries, including Sudan, which has been afflicted by a civil war that has caused more than 4 million people to flee since 2023. Further, President Donald Trump and his administration are considering adding more countries to the list, including the DRC, which would put vulnerable communities in more danger, as their options for sanctuary will be even more limited.
Due to these circumstances, NUI is trying to become more involved in moving policies that affect at-risk members of the diaspora in a more positive direction.
“One thing we can see with this administration is that policy can change overnight and can change everything,” Akunna Okonkwo, a programs and research volunteer with NUI, told The Informer. “Policy about who gets aid affects people immediately, and the thing is, up here [in the U.S.], we kind of turn our eye then forget that [refugees’] livelihoods are being cut.”
Refugee Encourages Unity, Empathy Through Gaming
To help raise awareness of the situations refugees constantly face, Luan Mayen, the founder of Junub Games, is developing video games to encourage unity and empathy.
Mayen, 31, spent the first 22 years of his life living in a refugee camp in northern Uganda after his family was forced to flee from South Sudan. After his mother spent three years saving up $300 to buy her son a computer, Mayen developed his first game, “Salaam,” a mobile high-tension runner game that puts the player in the shoes of a refugee trying to escape to peaceful territory.
“Games are a very powerful tool that we can use to tell stories to use them for peace,” Mayen told The Informer. “The kids that are going to be playing the video game right now or maybe read about the video game — maybe in the next 30 years, they’re going to be in a place of power where they can make policies.”
At the advocacy workshop, he recounted his story to attendees, reflecting on the opportunity his mother gave him by gifting him the computer and how he didn’t let her hard work go to waste.
He urges people who have lived similar experiences to his own to utilize their talents and the opportunities presented to them to either change the course of their lives or to inspire others. Moreover, Mayen believes that if presented with a second chance at life, refugees should try to live it to the fullest extent possible.
“Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not,” Mayen told The Informer. “It’s our responsibility to use our past experiences to create a sustainable future for other people — for other refugees.”
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