2019
June
20
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 20, 2019
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Peter Grier
Washington editor

Every minute, 20 people leave everything behind.

They flee their houses and perhaps their country. They take loved ones or leave them. They carry few possessions. They are asylum-seekers, the internally displaced, the stateless. Refugees.

Today, June 20, is World Refugee Day, as established by the United Nations. It’s meant to focus attention on one of the greatest humanitarian needs on the planet.

Being a refugee means having to find a new sense of home in strange places. At the Monitor we have long considered telling that story to be a core aspect of our mission.

Over the last year our series “On the Move” has drawn vivid portraits of what it means to adapt to the circumstances of flight.

In Toronto, a Syrian refugee named Wasim Meslmani lives in a basement and runs a Facebook page devoted to helping other refugees adapt to Canada. Winter boots – they’ll need them.

In Tanzania, Daudi Nzila planted two mango saplings at his new house when he arrived as a refugee from Burundi. Thirty-six years on, the trees now cover the home like a canopy, blotting the sun.

And in Jordan a flood of Syrian refugees is straining the nation. But at Al Hussein Secondary School, Jordanian and Syrian students bond over sports, studies, and music.

“Teachers and students here treat us as if we are part of Jordan,” says Haya al Qarah, a teenage Syrian girl.

On World Refugee Day may we all try to demonstrate such generosity of spirit.

Now on to our five stories for today, which include a look at whether facial recognition technology could make privacy a thing of the past. And, yes, we have a refugee piece, about the talent and spirit Rohingya refugees have brought to new homes in India.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Josh Smith/Reuters
Photo sheets of the North Korean refugees helped by the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association are displayed in Seoul, South Korea, June 11.
Steve Schaefer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP
Morehouse College graduates hear billionaire technology investor and philanthropist Robert F. Smith say he will provide grants to wipe out the student debt of the entire 2019 class in Atlanta, May 19.

Difference-maker

Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
Tasmida, seen here in the Rohingya camp where she lives in the Kanchan Kunj neighborhood outside New Delhi, will soon be the first Rohingya refugee to enter college in India. She dreams of becoming a human rights lawyer.

The Monitor's View

AP
Visitors walk around the 40-foot Peace Cross dedicated to World War I soldiers in Bladensburg, Md.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Matt Rourke/AP
Chris Smith makes his way through floodwaters to the Macedonia Baptist Church in Westville, New Jersey, June 20. Severe storms containing heavy rains and strong winds spurred flooding across the eastern United States, leaving 200,000 people without power.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Come back tomorrow. At what age do we become morally responsible for our actions? We’ll have a story exploring that question in the context of Harvard’s decision to rescind admittance of a Parkland shooting survivor based on offensive statements made when he was 16.

More issues

2019
June
20
Thursday
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