CNN's Jeff Koinange has spent years covering events from Africa, including visiting war and disaster zones and following the lives of refugees forced from their homes. Here are his reflections on the U.N.'s World Refugee Day:
Just imagine for a moment that everything you own -- from your hard-earned money to your home to your car to little mementos like pictures on the wall -- has just been taken from you by a group of people who don't like the way you look or the shade of your skin or the shape of your nose. Everything gone except, perhaps, the clothes on your back.
You've been forced to flee, probably separated from your family and end up on the run with a bunch of people you've never met, but with whom you now share a common goal -- staying alive.
Many hours or even days later, you arrive at a shelter run by an international nongovernmental organization.
You're tired, exhausted, sick to your stomach and scared to death. You end up sharing a tent with 40 to 60 other strangers where your bathroom, bedroom and kitchen combined have all been reduced to little more than the size of a normal bed.
And this will be your home for the next few months, perhaps years, and in some cases, decades. This is what it's like for a person fleeing persecution, war, civil strife, genocide.
Imagine living like this for years if not decades, raising your family in a refugee camp because you can't go home. Even if you do manage to go home, you learn someone else has taken over your land, your home, your life.
I've seen that person many times, that face that says, "I too once had it all but one day lost it all."
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