World Refugee Day 2026: joy as an act of courage
Every year on 20 June, the world pauses to recognise the experiences, rights, and resilience of people who have been forced to flee their homes. World Refugee Day, designated by the United Nations, is not simply a moment of commemoration. It is a call to action.
This year, UNHCR's theme—'Until everyone is safe'—arrives at a moment when the right to seek asylum is under growing pressure in many parts of the world. It also marks the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention, the international agreement that protects the rights of forcibly displaced people and affirms the right to seek safety. More than 117 million people are currently forcibly displaced worldwide. Behind that number are individuals—parents, children, artists, teachers—rebuilding their lives under extraordinary pressure.
'Until everyone is safe' is a reminder that protection is not charity. It is a shared responsibility. And it raises a question that sits at the heart of our work: what does it mean to truly support a person, not just their immediate physical needs, but their dignity, their need for connection, their right to laugh?
Joy as an act of courage: a conversation about art, humanity and humanitarian response
To mark World Refugee Day 2026, RED NOSES International brought together three voices from the frontlines of humanitarian response for a panel discussion on a question that rarely makes it into policy documents: what does it mean to put the human being first?
The panel—'Joy as an act of courage: where art and human connection become the response'—was moderated by Chiara Manavella, Head of the Humanitarian Response Programme of RED NOSES International and brought together Sofia Casas from UNHCR, Arno Tanner from Europe Cares, and Raed Sadeq, healthcare clown artist with RED NOSES Palestine.
Together, they explored the role of art, laughter and human connection in humanitarian response—and the courage it takes to choose them. In conflict zones, in displacement camps, in the institutions designed to help: what happens when we stop treating emotional expression as a secondary concern? When we recognise that a child's need to play, to laugh, to feel seen is not a luxury to be addressed once the 'real' work is done, but part of the real work itself?
When play is out of reach: voices from the UK–France border
This World Refugee Day, we also spoke to our partners at Project Play, an organisation working with children on the move at the UK–France border. At living sites near Dunkirk, their team sees up to 50 children and babies in a single afternoon—children routinely exposed to violence, evictions, and the destruction of their belongings, with no access to education and limited access to support. Yet in the middle of all of this, children still find ways to laugh, to play, to connect. Their collaboration with RED NOSES International brought moments of joy and connection into that reality. Discover what children on the move need.
'We don't wait for the world to change—we become the change'
In a video message shared to mark the day, RED NOSES International's CEO, Natalie Porias, offered a different kind of reflection. Not a report on numbers or reach, but something more personal: a meditation on hope—what it actually is, and where it comes from.
Her message is simple and worth sitting with. Hope, she reminds us, does not come from headlines or from waiting. It does not come from pretending things are fine. It starts small—with a smile at a stranger, with showing up, with refusing to hand the future over to fear.
At RED NOSES International, she says, we do not pretend everything is fine. We know that darkness and light share the same room. But we show up anyway—because our healthcare clown artists have shown us, again and again, that connection is possible even in the hardest places. That together, people can do remarkable things.
What we believe
World Refugee Day is one day. The displacement crisis is every day.
At RED NOSES International, our Humanitarian Response Programme deploys trained healthcare clown artists to work alongside humanitarian partners in crisis contexts—bringing psychosocial support through humour and art to people experiencing forced displacement. Not as a cure. Not as a distraction. But as a complement to care, and as an affirmation of something that no crisis should be allowed to take away: the right to feel human.
Until everyone is safe and dignified—we show up.