ROCKFORD—Education for their children and jobs for themselves are at the top of the list of needs for the refugees of the world.

Melissa Fleming stressed that at two appearances at Rockford University Sept. 21, World Day of Peace.

Fleming is the communications director and chief spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Her Rockford visit was sponsored by RU and the Peace Coalition of the Rock River Valley.

With more than 65 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, Fleming said, “I think we’re showing improvement on education.” But more is needed.

“The world woke up to the refugee problem when they started coming to Europe,” she said, “and they (Europeans) started asking, ‘Why are they coming?’ ”

Her first thought, she said, was “We’ve been telling you for two years.”

But the arrival through Greece and Italy, often after perilous and sometimes deadly, boat crossings on the Mediterranean, brought a distant trouble home to Europeans. An image of a young boy lying dead on a beach gave the tragedy a human face.

People fleeing civil war in Syria and other wars in Africa moved into mainstream media around the world.

While the UN and others have set up camps throughout the world to help refugees, Fleming said the average stay in those camps can be from 17 to 20 years. Some camps have opened schools and generated a local economy; many have not.

“The ability to work and to provide education for their kids,” Fleming said, is paramount to adult refugees. These goals must be met, she adds. “Without this, there is no dignity, no rebuilding.”

Fleming met with area refugees and others in a private afternoon gathering (see below) on the RU campus before speaking about the worldwide crisis and taking part in a panel discussion in the evening.

“There’s a saying, ‘Statistics are human beings with the tears dried off,’” she said to launch her evening talk.

The human being she used to illustrate the talk was a Syrian refugee named Doaa, whose name means peace.

Doaa and her family fled to Egypt early in the Syrian civil war.

After persuasion from her fiancé, Bassem, and permission from her family, the couple bought passage on a smuggler’s boat to try to reach Europe. They hoped to join friends in northern Europe and to apply for asylum.

Ultimately, after being rammed by a rival smuggler’s boat, their craft sank. Doaa, afraid of water and unable to swim, was saved by floating in a child’s inflatable pool ring.

Parents and grandparents brought her three children to try to save. Only one survived four days in rough waters with nothing to drink or eat.

Doaa’s fiancé was also among the victims of the tragedy.

Doaa is still recovering from the tragedy, Fleming said, but is getting help to do so.

The little girl she saved lost her parents and one sister, but has been reunited with an older sister, an uncle and his family.

Reunions like these represent one kind of success in a refugee‘s journey, Fleming explained, but most refugees would really like to be able to return to their homes when the danger that drove them away has passed.

Flemings book, “A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival,” is scheduled for January release.