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What is World Refugee Day?
World Refugee Day, which takes place each year on June 20th, honors people around the world who have been displaced by conflict or persecution. We are celebrating World Refugee Day this year by spotlighting refugee authors and their works.
The first World Refugee Day was celebrated on June 20, 2001 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention. As World War I, and then World War II, came to a close, interest in protecting refugees grew. The 1951 Refugee Convention represents the culmination of efforts to protect the millions of people who were displaced after both world wars.
The focus of World Refugee Day 2026 is safety: “Until everyone is safe, we show up. Until everyone is safe, the work is not done.”
This post will highlight authors who process, document, and validate their experiences through literature while effectively building awareness for refugees around the world.
Behrouz Boochani
Notable work: No Friend But the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison (2018)
Boochani is a Kurdish journalist and activist who fled Iran in fear of persecution in 2013. While attempting to seek asylum from the Australian government, he was detained for seven years at the Manus Island Regional Processing Center (or “prison” as Boochani intentionally referred to it). The Australian government maintained that this was standard procedure for those arriving by boat without authorization. The problem? This “Pacific Solution” provided no time limits for immigration claims to be processed, and no guaranteed entry into Australia, even if the immigration claim was finally approved. Boochani and other human rights advocates argued that this “solution” caused additional harm to refugees, violating the non-refoulement principle. In 2019, he escaped to New Zealand, where he has continued his activism as a journalist and author.
Boochani shared his experiences in No Friend But the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison. The book was written while he was detained, via a series of text messages sent from a secret phone.
Omar Mohamed
Notable work: When Stars Are Scattered (2020, co-written and illustrated by Victoria Jamieson)
Omar Mohamed was four years old when the Somali Civil War came to his village. Separated from the rest of his family during the attack, Omar and his two-year-old brother Hassan followed their neighbors on foot to the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. Fatuma, an elderly neighbor, became a surrogate mother to the boys in the camp.
While Dadaab provided sanctuary from the violence in Somalia, living conditions were poor. The refugees referred to it as an “open prison” because they were not allowed to leave the confines of the camp. The biweekly food distribution failed to feed the people adequately. Life was especially difficult for Omar’s brother Hassan, who is nonverbal with a seizure disorder. He was picked on for his disability and would often get lost following donkeys and goats around the compound. Omar was concerned that if he decided to attend school, Hassan would be left unprotected.
When Fatuma agreed to look after Hassan, Omar made the pivotal decision to begin attending school. It was there that Omar met the U.N. social worker who helped him and his brother apply to resettle in the United States. Seven years later, the application was finally approved, and they left the camp in 2009. After a stint in Arizona, Omar and Hassan joined a large refugee community in Lancaster, PA, which is where they currently reside with Omar’s wife and five children.
Omar is now sharing his experiences and working to make life better for refugees. Omar’s graphic novel When Stars Are Scattered was released in 2020, eleven years after he left the Dadaab refugee camp. The novel, geared towards middle schoolers, details his experiences there. Omar also founded Refugee Strong, a nonprofit organization that supports displaced young people through access to education, mentorship, and other resources.
Dina Nayeri
Notable work: The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You (2019)
Dina Nayeri grew up in the throes of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Her family’s first emigration attempt was to London when Nayeri was six years old. Once her classmates’ parents discovered that the new girl was an Iranian, the children began to violently bully Nayeri. A group of boys greeted her each day by punching her in the stomach. A few weeks later, Nayeri ended up in the hospital to reattach the end of her little finger after two boys intentionally slammed her hand in a door. Listening in on adults’ interpretation of the incident, Nayeri had her first experience with the expectation that refugees should be grateful no matter what the circumstances.
The family returned to Iran for three years, staying until her mother was thrown in jail and threatened with death for converting to Christianity. Nayeri spent the next two years in refugee hostels in Dubai and Rome. The family’s application for asylum to the United States was approved when Nayeri was ten, and her family was placed in Oklahoma, where she encountered further racial bullying. In the midst of this, her teacher remarked on how grateful she must be to be in the US. Nayeri began to buy into this belief, repeating this mantra to herself over and over: “I’m lucky. I’m grateful. I’m the smartest in my class.”
Nayeri observed that as they became American citizens and assimilated into the culture of their new community, the bullying and hatred waned. People were interested in the ugly aspects of their refugee story and their former country, but not the everyday beauty and culture of their old life. They didn’t want to hear that Nayeri’s family had a rich, meaningful life in Iran when it wasn’t being torn apart by war.
In 2019, Nayeri addressed the expectations of gratitude placed on refugees in her book, The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You. Through her own story and the stories of other displaced people, Nayeri calls into question what it means to be a “good” immigrant and critically examines the way Western governments decide which dangerous situations are worthy of asylum. She explores what it would look like if refugees were seen as whole people, with all of their flaws, strengths, and contributions in one package.
Nayeri explains, “I don’t just write about displacement. I write about pain and change, trust, power, vulnerability. In writing and in life, I like drama: flawed people being messy.”
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Sources
Boochani, Behrouz. “About Behrouz Boochani.” Behrouz Boochani. Accessed May 27, 2026. https://www.behrouzboochani.com/about-behrouz-boochani.
“Behrouz Boochani.” Wikipedia. Last modified May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behrouz_Boochani.
“Non-refoulement.” Wikipedia. Last modified May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-refoulement.
“A Refugee at 4, He Felt Like a Lost Star. Now His Voice Shines in a Graphic Memoir.” NPR, October 16, 2021. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/10/16/1044055476/a-refugee-at-4-he-felt-like-a-lost-star-now-his-voice-shines-in-a-graphic-memoir.
“About.” Refugee Strong. Accessed May 27, 2026. https://www.refugeestrong.org/about-3.
Nayeri, Dina. “The Ungrateful Refugee.” The Guardian, April 4, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-ungrateful-refugee.
Nayeri, Dina. The Ungrateful Refugee. Accessed May 27, 2026. https://dinanayeri.com/books/the-ungrateful-refugee/.
Nayeri, Dina. Dina Nayeri. Accessed May 27, 2026. https://dinanayeri.com/.