World Refugee Day shadowed by suffering

June 20 is World Refugee Day. In the years I have been writing commemorative messages on this date, I have pleaded for support of displaced people worldwide and of the United Nations, so crucial in providing that support.

But this year my plea comes with special sorrow as we slide backward as a society, worsening the suffering of those forced to flee their homes because of violence, poverty, and climate conditions. How can we build the capacity to feel the suffering of others as we feel the suffering of our own children when they are sick, hurt or afraid?

Every morning as I read the latest news affecting immigrants, refugees, students, and travelers, my concern deepens for family members not born in the U.S. and for members of the Johnson County United Nations Association also not born in this country. I fear their U.S. legal status may not protect them.

If we have not yet had family or friends threatened by recent U.S. immigration strategies, stories can aid us in building the muscle for compassion. Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, to name one, provides a wealth of stories about Haitians in Miami and in their native country — people targets of current policy changes.

One story, “Without Inspection,” tells of a man, a refugee, who, as he falls from a Miami skyscraper that he is helping to build, recalls his migration and the woman who rescued him. While others from his swamped boat drowned or were detained on the beach, he, by luck, was met by a stranger who gave him water, food, and escorted him to shelter — a woman who had arrived on such a boat, whose husband died on such a boat, who sits on the beach nightly to rescue others from such a boat. As the man falls from the scaffolding, he remembers this woman and her child as his loved ones, having lost his original family.

Though current U.S. expedited practices are especially cruel, abandoning the most vulnerable is not new. This month, we can add June 6 to our remembrance of refugees on June 20. On that date in 1939, the U.S. joined Canada and Cuba in refusing to allow the 937 passengers on the MS St. Louis to land on North American shores. Those passengers, mostly Jewish refugees from Germany, had to return to Europe. Some survived the Holocaust; some, didn’t. If we Americans could hold together the memories of D Day on June 7 and the MS St. Louis on June 6, we could better understand ourselves as global citizens.

It is not only the displaced people on our borders who need our careful attention but also globally displaced people — 16.5 million Syrians live amid unexploded munitions, disease, and malnutrition. 720,00 Somalis and Sudanese, fleeing conflict and drought in their home countries, are sheltering in camps in Kenya where the World Food Program has reduced food aid to unprecedented lows due to cuts to U.N. funding by the U.S. and other member states.

So, yes, on World Refugee Day and every day speak up for, act for, the good of displaced people in our midst and abroad. Advocate for the humanitarian and peacekeeping work of the United Nations and vital U.S. funding for and constructive participation in that work. Donate yourself to UNICEF and the World Food Program. See your children in the faces of others and be moved.

Barbara Eckstein is the president of the Johnson County United Nations Association.