Posted on 26 June 2025
By Sam London, Standards & Humanitarian Manager
As is the new norm, it’s hard to keep track of which travesty requires our attention, so let’s start with a quick roll call of collapse since I last wrote here.
The so-called 12-day war between Israel and Iran flared and fizzled in rapid succession, with President Trump bypassing Congress to launch strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, then crowning himself peacemaker-in-chief for brokering a “total ceasefire” that, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, accomplished little beyond headlines and havoc.
In Sudan, the humanitarian crisis deepens into catastrophe. Over 25 million people face acute food insecurity, with displacement now topping twelve million. In Darfur and Kordofan, famine isn’t just a forecast, it’s a fact. Aid workers are evacuating. Children are starving. And still, the world hesitates.
South Sudan is bleeding too. A hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières was bombed in Fangak, killing civilians in their beds and wounding dozens more, another grim entry in the ledger of deliberate attacks on humanitarian infrastructure. In Ukraine, Russian drones continue hammering civilian energy systems. NATO squabbles over who’s paying the military bills while Kharkiv shivers in the dark. In Mali, street protests against the junta gather force even as regional democracies flounder under economic strain. And through it all, the U.S. continues to redefine executive power, waging undeclared wars while Congress shrugs and the Constitution gathers dust.
It’s a grim carousel, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably found yourself flicking through it all with a kind of weary detachment, not out of indifference, but out of sheer saturation. Catastrophe fatigue has gone mainstream. Ask any Gen Z; they’ve been living in it since birth.
And so, somewhere in that blur, it almost escaped me that this week was World Refugee Day, a day set aside to remind ourselves that no one should be punished for seeking safety. But in the fog of headlines and the hum of escalating crises, something else cut through. Not the breaking news. Not the casualty figures. Something quieter, and more sinister.
I watched two videos from Al Jazeera and both still lodged in my mind.
The first; non-Jewish residents in Tel Aviv being physically barred from bomb shelters during a rocket attack. Doors slammed. Strangers turned away. Not because there wasn’t space, but because they didn’t “belong.” The second; a TikTok trend in which Israeli influencers gleefully mock an Iranian news anchor who was wounded on air during a missile strike. Her fear, her blood, her confusion turned into content. A punchline. A scrollable spectacle.
These aren’t isolated acts of cruelty. They’re symptoms of broader decay, a world where violence is commodified, where exclusion is institutionalised, and where suffering is repackaged for engagement metrics. We’re not just witnessing atrocity. We’re watching it, filming it, and in some cases, laughing at it.
And it’s into this world, this architecture of casual dehumanisation, that we marked World Refugee Day.
For the uninitiated, June 20 isn’t just a date, but a marker of memory. We observe it on this day because it’s the anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention; the first formal international agreement to protect the rights of those fleeing persecution. A promise made after the world watched genocide happen once, and said “never again.”
But let’s be honest; that promise is fraying. A lot of it stems from our tribal ability to “other” people, and all refugees know what that feels like. If not from the persecution they fled, then from the rest of the world that defines them by their struggle. We think of refugees as people fleeing bombs or floods, from dramatic ruptures. But that’s not always the case. Many are running from something slower. More insidious. Less visible. A thousand small exclusions that slowly push you out of the life you once belonged to.
You lose access to healthcare. Then to housing. Then to safety. Then to public sympathy.
You’re shot trying to get flour.
You’re mocked for being wounded.
You’re told there’s no room in the shelter.
You’re not hated. Just… inconvenient. And then; gone.
This is not theory. This is what we watched this week in Israel, in Gaza, in the social media comment sections cheering the cruelty. And it’s not limited to authoritarian states.
The U.S., the so-called land of liberty, when it’s not kidnapping people off the streets with balaclava’d “agents,” now permits its executive bomb foreign nations without the consent of Congress. No declaration of war. No authorisation. Just power exercised in real time. Trump bombed Iran; Congress blinked. Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament held a vote on whether to close the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Read that again; the democracy skipped process, the autocracy held a vote.
This is what Kenneth Roth warned us about this week on 30 with Guyon Espiner. The former Human Rights Watch director, in his interview he says; “If the rules don’t apply equally, they don’t apply at all.” We cannot selectively defend rights. We either protect them everywhere, or we prepare to lose them anywhere.
Which brings us to a quieter story. Yale professors Jason Stanley, Marci Shore Timothy Snyder, all leading experts on fascism, have left the U.S and moved to Canada. Not because they were targeted, but because they’ve read this script before. “The lesson of 1933,” Stanley said, “is; you get out.”
He may not be a refugee in the traditional sense, but he is a warning. Because that’s what a refugee really is, someone who no longer fits inside the boundaries of their own country’s imagination.
And perhaps that’s why Spain and Italy, nations with own painful legacies of fascism, are now doing something extraordinary. While wealthier countries cut aid and build walls, they’re increasing funding to the Global South. Perhaps because they remember how quickly things unravel when cruelty becomes custom.
So yes, we mark World Refugee Day. Not as a branding exercise, but as a mirror.
Because today it’s 122 million people on the move.
Tomorrow, it could be you. Or me. Or that Yale professor.
You don’t need a war to become a refugee. Just a few more cuts.
And those cuts aren’t only happening “over there.” Right here in Aotearoa, a new government-commissioned social cohesion report has shown what many of us have been feeling; trust is slipping. Inequality is widening. Our ability to see ourselves in each other is quietly eroding. The myth that New Zealand is immune to division is just that.
But let’s not end on the cliff’s edge.
Because something remarkable is happening too; people are fighting back with joy. The No Kings movement, born out of protest against authoritarian overreach, is gaining serious momentum. On 14 June, an estimated 4–7 million people took part in coordinated demonstrations across more than 2,000 cities, including conservative strongholds like Alabama and Kentucky, making it “among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history”. Crucially, it wasn’t a left vs right affair, No Kings deliberately framed itself as bipartisan, eschewing polarising slogans and drawing hand-in-hand crowds from across the political spectrum.
This movement isn’t just anti-monarchy, it’s pro-community; rooted in broad-based concern for democracy. Organised by loose coalitions rather than high-profile leaders, it delivered a powerful signal: democracy isn’t just for the elites—it’s what we build.
That’s the hope we hold onto. That solidarity is still louder than cruelty. That belonging can still be rebuilt. That even now, in the shadow of displacement, we can still choose each other.
Let’s make that choice. Every day.