In 2022, the Ukraine war forced the world to see refugees again. How long will that last?
Refugees from Ukraine line up to get in to Poland on border crossing in Medyka, in eastern Poland on February 28, 2022. (WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
With millions of Ukrainian refugees spread around the world, we saw the problem again. But it never went away.
It has been 10 months since Russian forces began their invasion of Ukraine, with the apparent aim of overthrowing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been killed, and more than 7.8 million Ukrainians have sought refuge across Europe.
Ukrainian refugees have demonstrated extraordinary resilience and captured the world's attention while making the treacherous journey out of their home country and into neighboring countries like Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova. Many children on their backs and helped elderly people reach safety, prioritizing the safety of the most vulnerable in their community before themselves.
It didn't take long for the EU to come to their aid with the Temporary Protection regime that grants Ukrainians the automatic right to stay and work across its 27 member nations with health care, education, shelter and financial support for up to three years.
The immediate support and solidarity given to the Ukrainian crisis in Europe were impressive, but it leads to reasonable questions about why the EU never offered these services over the past few decades to millions of refugees from the Middle East and Africa who traveled thousands of miles for protection only to be turned away at Europe's borders.
In a season when one of the world's largest religions celebrates the birth of a child in Roman-occupied Palestine more than 2,000 years ago — whose family can reasonably be described as homeless refugees — these questions carry a special resonance.
