Still alive, my dear, still alive

Say this city has ten million souls… yet there’s no place for us, my dear. — WH Auden

Over 100 million people today are displaced. Syrians, fleeing civil war since 2011, remain scattered across Türkiye, Lebanon and Jordan. More than 5.9 million Palestinians live as registered refugees under UNRWA, many in Gaza, where bombardment has erased entire neighbourhoods.

Over a million Rohingya linger in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar camps after fleeing genocidal violence in Myanmar. Ukrainians displaced by the 2022 invasion number over six million in Europe, many facing precarious housing and dwindling protections.

Meanwhile, more than 7 million Venezuelans have crossed borders into Colombia, Peru and Brazil, driven by economic collapse and repression.

Families in Gaza survive amid ruins. Rohingya in Bangladesh face disease and floods. Ukrainians in the UK are four times more likely to experience homelessness than locals. Refugee camps, once temporary, are now cities of memory and waiting.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot

go there now.

So where do they go?

To wherever borders remain porous. In West Asia, they cram into overburdened camps or unsafe cities. In Europe, the EU’s temporary protection for Ukrainians contrasts with policies deterring African or West Asian asylum seekers. Across the Americas, Venezuelans walk hundreds of miles to escape hunger-some welcomed, some detained.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand windows and a thousand doors:

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one

of them was ours.

When does this end? For many, never. Palestinians mark 77 years since their dispossession. Syrians see no viable peace. Rohingya have no repatriation agreement. Climate change now fuels a new exodus. Floods in Pakistan, drought in East Africa — yet climate refugees remain legally invisible.

Borders are hardening and empathy thinning. Global refugee aid, per UNHCR, saw a 52 per cent shortfall in 2024. But bureaucracy whispers: Return next year.

As the birds in the trees sing free of border and bias, one asks: when will the human race sing so too? Not as exiles, but as beings with place in society — still alive, my dear, still alive.

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