The heart-wrenching choice refugee mothers face
ESSAY | On World Refugee Day, UNICEF USA’s CEO shares her family story
I remember the first time my mom told me her story of coming to America. She was six and her brother was four when their mother kissed them goodbye and handed them over to a family friend the children barely knew. They boarded a ship bound for the United States. It was 1939, and the Nazis had invaded Austria. The only way my grandmother could be sure that her children would survive was to send them away.
They arrived in New York and spent the next two years living in an orphanage on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They never saw the woman who sheltered them to safety again. They would eventually go to live with an aunt and uncle before their dad joined them. But it would be ten years before they saw their mother again.
The story has always haunted me. As a child, I often wondered what my mom and her brother felt as they crossed the ocean — too young to understand that their mother’s love was so great that she sent them away to protect them. Now, as a mom myself, I think of my grandmother, and the heart-wrenching decision she had to make to ensure her children would have a better future. And, I think of the woman who brought them here — that one person who truly made a difference — whose act of generosity has stood out as a role model my entire life.
As a child, I believed my mom’s story was unique — that it had only happened to her. Today, I know better.
Today, mothers are being faced with the same decisions my grandmother faced — do I hold on more tightly or do I let go? We are in the midst of the largest global humanitarian crisis since World War II. My mother’s story is being repeated over and over again.
An ever-growing number of these children are on their own. At least 300,000 unaccompanied children and children separated from their families were recorded in 80 countries in 2015 and 2016, a nearly five-fold increase since 2010. In places like Africa and the Middle East, famine caused by conflict and drought is driving millions from their homes. We must take action and put children first.
UNICEF is uniquely positioned to save lives. We work in over 190 countries and territories, vaccinate more than 40 percent of the world’s children and are the largest buyer of ready-to-use therapeutic food, a lifesaving treatment for malnutrition. UNICEF is our best hope. Along refugee routes, UNICEF is providing critical humanitarian services including water, nutrition and health care, and establishing safe spaces where children can play, learn and receive counseling.
We want them to have the opportunity to learn and to play. Sometimes, for parents living in regions where resources are scarce and the threat of violence is high, that means having no choice but to send their children out into the world on their own, and hope that the people they meet along the way will enable them to have the childhood that their current situations have denied them.
So, in memory of a woman I never met who made sure my mom got that opportunity, I pledge to follow suit. I hope you will join me.
Caryl M. Stern is president and CEO of UNICEF USA.
