This World Refugee Day, We Launched Something We Wish Didn’t Need to Exist

A Sudanese girl at a transit centre for refugees in Renk, South Sudan, 2024. Photograph: Luis Tato/AFP/Getty Images

This World Refugee Day, we’re not just marking the day. We’re stepping forward with purpose. Today is the launch of Voices on the Move, the student-led blog of the Displacement & Health Relief Network (DHRN). We didn’t create this platform out of celebration. We created it because millions are being displaced, silenced, and forgotten. Home has become a warzone. Borders have become tools of violence. The lives of Black, African, Muslim, undocumented, and stateless people are treated as footnotes, if acknowledged at all.

This blog exists to intervene in that silence. It’s a refusal to disappear, to be spoken for, or to be erased. Because while institutions stall and systems fail, we are still here. And we have something to say.

The Largest Displacement Crisis Since WWII and the World Is Still Looking Away

Over 14 million people have been forcibly displaced in Sudan since April 2023, according to UNHCR’s Global Trends report published in June 2025. This makes it the largest displacement crisis in the world today, and the largest since the Second World War. Entire communities have been uprooted, villages burned, hospitals bombed, and families forced to flee in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Despite the scale, Sudan has become an afterthought on the global stage. There are no front-page headlines, no emergency summits, no viral campaigns flooding our timelines. Instead, there is silence. A deliberate, deafening silence that erases the urgency of this crisis and dulls the world’s sense of moral responsibility.

Across Sudan, 30 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, but global aid remains critically underfunded. In El Fasher, North Darfur, one of the areas hardest hit by the conflict, grassroots networks are stepping in where governments and institutions have failed. A single community kitchen, supported by DHRN and brave Sudanese volunteers, is helping feed over 1,200 displaced people who fled RSF violence. That is just a fraction of the nearly half a million people trapped in the city. Every day is a struggle to feed everyone. Prices have skyrocketed, with a single bar of soap now costing $10, and even basic supplies are growing scarce. Still, local organizers show up daily, even when the world doesn’t.

Women in Sudan are risking assault simply to find food for their families. Children are dying from dehydration and illnesses that could easily be treated with basic medical care. Still, there is no coordinated international response. How many lives must be lost before Sudan is treated with the urgency it deserves?

This crisis is not being ignored because the world is unaware. It is being ignored because of who the victims are. When those facing crisis are Black, Muslim, or African, their suffering is consistently treated as less urgent and less worthy of global attention. Sudan’s crisis is not invisible. It is being deliberately deprioritized by media, institutions, and international actors who know that stories about Sudan will not generate the same clicks, shares, or engagement. In a media landscape driven by algorithms and audience interest, coverage is often shaped not by urgency but by what people are willing to care about.

The numbers are revealing. In the past year, the German Chancellery issued 190 press releases mentioning Ukraine, but just three referencing Sudan. The New York Times ran nearly ten times more stories on Gaza than on Sudan, and over thirteen times more on Ukraine. This is not a matter of access to information. The stories exist. But media outlets know they will get fewer clicks, fewer views, and less engagement. In today’s attention economy, that often means less compassion and even less action.

We are not asking for special treatment. We are demanding fairness, the same urgency, the same care, and the same humanity that others in crisis receive. This moment is not just about humanitarian response. It is a test of global values, and a mirror to the racism and selective empathy that continue to shape who the world chooses to see, and who it chooses to ignore.

Who Gets to Be a Refugee?

During the Ukraine crisis, we saw fast-tracked visas, massive donations, and welcome signs. We don’t resent that. We ask only: why not us too?

Within weeks, Canada created a special immigration pathway for Ukrainians, offering charter flights, temporary visas, and immediate resettlement options. But when it came to Sudan, there were no emergency visas, no direct airlifts, and no expedited processing. Families fleeing the same kind of war and trauma were told to apply through regular immigration channels. Some are still waiting. Others gave up entirely. And some died before ever receiving permission to come.

At DHRN, we posted a side-by-side comparison of Canada’s response to Ukraine and Sudan. The post went viral, reaching over 85,000 views and more than 4,400 likes. It resonated because it said what so many were already thinking: when displacement is Black or African, compassion becomes conditional.

As a Sudanese first-generation Canadian, I’ve witnessed this double standard not through headlines, but through people I know. While Ukrainians were welcomed through special programs, Sudanese families were left to wait in uncertainty, with no clear pathway, no state of emergency declared for them. The message has echoed for years. In 2017, Sudan was included in the Trump administration’s first “Muslim Ban.” In 2025, Sudan was placed back on a new U.S. travel ban list, under vague claims of national security. These decisions were not just about borders. They were about which lives are seen as safe to welcome — and which are not.

And it’s not just governments. It’s the systems we’re told to believe in. The 1951 Refugee Convention, which still defines who qualifies for protection, does not cover internally displaced people. That means more than 10 million Sudanese who fled violence within their own country have no legal status, no international safety net, and no clear path to protection. They are invisible by law. It is unthinkable that a document written in the aftermath of World War II still decides who deserves refuge in 2025. It is unjust that a framework built to protect never evolved to include people like us.

Sudan is not a crisis that the world has no tools to address. It is a crisis the world chooses not to see. And we are done waiting for permission to be cared for.

That’s why we’re not just telling stories — we’re making space for them.

Displacement Deserves Dignity: Introducing Voices on the Move

Voices on the Move is the student-led blog of the Displacement & Health Relief Network, created to center stories and perspectives that are too often excluded from mainstream platforms. This space exists for students, community members, and anyone committed to justice in displacement and migration.

We welcome a range of contributions, including personal reflections, political analysis, creative writing, and lived experience. You do not need to be a refugee to contribute here. You simply need to care about what is happening to displaced people and be willing to engage with honesty, courage, and solidarity.

This blog was born out of necessity. Our experiences should not be reduced to statistics or buried in footnotes. Our voices should not be filtered through distant headlines. Our stories deserve to be told on our own terms, in our own words, and to be treated with the same dignity we are demanding for our communities.

This World Refugee Day, we are not simply acknowledging the day. We are stepping forward with purpose. While institutions delay and systems fail, people are dying, families are displaced, and entire communities are being erased. We created Voices on the Move not because the world is ready, but because it is long overdue.

Displacement deserves dignity. Our stories matter. Your voice can be part of this movement.