The Untold Stories of War

There are so many aspects of war that headlines about air strikes and harrowing pictures of casualties do not reveal. 

We cannot understand war without knowledge of what happens after the bombs explode - people fleeing their homes, friends and families, leaving behind everything they’ve known and worked towards. 

The UN’s latest Global Trends report, released this month, revealed that there were 41.6 million refugees at the end of 2025.  An additional 68.7 million people were displaced within their own country due to conflict or violence. 

These numbers, though vast, can be quantified. What is so much harder to understand is that each one of these tens of millions are human beings with their own story and countless tragedies to tell. 

There is no playbook for those who face risks so grave that they must flee their homes. People’s circumstances differ, but the vast majority of refugees do not have the option to calmly leave for a new and secure place of residence.

Often their journey begins with an internal displacement – in some cases more than one – followed by an attempt to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. 

When refugees first leave their homes, they face a period of immediate hardship and uncertainty. They often leave with limited belongings, facing the daunting task of finding safety and providing for their basic needs. 

Some people naively believe that once refugees are in a camp or centre, they are safe. This could not be farther from the truth.

I have seen first-hand how the vast majority of refugee camps lack the most basic of needs for a decent life. Access to clean water and food becomes a daily struggle and anything resembling a proper bathroom – forget about clean or hygienic – becomes a luxury.

In many of the camps I visited over the years, refugees had to pay rent, security fees and more. A trip to the toilet at night could be perilous journey, for women and girls especially. Sometimes camps house refugees from warring sides in active conflict.

I remember visiting a Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley over ten years ago and being invited into a young couple’s tent, home to their two children and two nieces and nephews. I looked around the inside of this tent, no more than four or five metres square, and simply couldn’t picture how everyone was able to lay down at night to sleep on the damp muddy ground. 

“My only dream is that one day the kids will again have a dry and warm bed to sleep on, wake up in the morning to eat breakfast and put clean clothes on and go to school,” the young mother told me as she was trying to cook her family a meal, burning old shoes for a source of fire. I have never forgotten her words, which have resonated even more deeply since I myself became a mother.

Any provision of mental health support, despite unimaginable distress, is often very far down the list of priorities.

One 16-year-old Yazidi girl I met in a refugee camp in northern Iraq showed me her collection of drawings, painstakingly created using cardboard she had collected from a nearby rubbish dump. While exceptionally artistic, her paintings revealed a heartbreaking degree of pain and trauma. It was the only kind of therapeutic outlet available to her; she told me she longed for a proper supply of paint and paper.

In many host countries, refugees face huge challenges to obtain papers allowing them to work, meaning many are forced to labour illegally under harsh and inhumane conditions for a pittance.

Those who are lucky enough to get the opportunity to apply for asylum in more welcoming countries can nonetheless wait in limbo, sometimes for years. Often, they are far away from their loved ones and consumed with worry about whether they are safe or not.

I remember working with a group of Syrian refugee women on a campaign advocating for a ceasefire in their hometown. One evening, our discussion was interrupted with a phone call for a young participant.

She left the discussion for ten minutes before returning, obviously distressed. One of her friends gently asked what had happened. She said that the caller had been an unidentified man claiming that he had information about her 60-year-old mother, who was being held by the Assad regime, and asking for money to reveal it.

It was clear that this was not the first extortion attempt the family suffers through.

When I asked if she needed to take some time and suggested that we could resume the following day, she said, “I wasn’t able to help my mum. The least I can do is try to help other mothers.” 

This World Refugee Day marks the frightening truth that as an international community, we have simply been unable to manage this global crisis.

And on an individual level, many continue to view refugees as a threat, even dehumanising them as if their fate was a moral judgement not a mere random act of cruel fate.

But to truly understand the crisis, we need to acknowledge the stories of refugees; of bodies and minds violated, of children who have only known conflict, of families denied the most basic of their human rights.

And we also need to hear the stories, away from the sometimes-misleading headlines, that showcase the amazing strength of the human spirit.

It takes an unimaginable level of resilience to start again from scratch, navigate complicated bureaucracy – sometimes in a different language – adjust to a new culture and try to keep your family together. 

Refugees and IDPs face the immense challenge of maintaining their human values and dignity in the face of extreme hardship. In the midst of war, acts of mere survival become the greatest possible resistance.