World Refugee Day was held globally for the first time on June 20, 2001, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating...
World Refugee Day was held globally for the first time on June 20, 2001, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees. It is an international day designated by the United Nations to honour refugees around the globe.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the day “is an occasion to build empathy and understanding for their plight and to recognise their resilience in rebuilding their lives.”
UNHCR has publicised a poem, “Refuge”, by Jason Fotso, written in 2015. Fotso, an African American student at the time, wrote the poem following the November 2015 Paris attacks, a wave of anti-refugee sentiment made its way overseas to the United States and there was a hostility to accepting Syrian refugees.
To the eighteen-year-old Fotso the closed-door stance contradicted the longstanding US policy of welcoming refugees, and, more symbolically, the sonnet inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.
Jason wrote this reverse poem so that the reading would transform the very words of antagonism into those of empathy:
Reverse poetry is a poem that can be read forwards (top to bottom) and have one meaning, but can also be read backwards (bottom to top) and have a different or opposite meaning.
“Refuge”
(Follow the...
