We inherit our first sense of belonging. Before we can choose a country, a faith, or a way of life, we inherit a family: its stories, its loyalties, and, often, its wounds. I have carried more than one kind of belonging across borders in my own life. I have also learned that what we inherit need not determine what we become. Sometimes, freedom begins with the possibility of building a life beyond the circumstances into which we were born.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was created in 1949 to help refugees displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Nearly eighty years later, refugee status has passed to children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. To flee is to lose more than a place; war and persecution can tear apart communities and uproot the familiar world in which a life once made sense. Refugee status should protect people in the aftermath of displacement while they find a way forward—a home, a future, and the freedom to build a life that is not forever defined by what they lost. It should be a bridge to a new life, not an inheritance passed from one generation to the next.
