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This is an article that talks about several countries becoming less accepting of migrants. It is important to the refugee conversation because there are now less places for these refugees to go.

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The European Union announced on Wednesday plans to revamp its migration policies and create a comprehensive system across its 27 member states for handling refugees and asylum-seekers.

But will EU member countries accept the reforms? Newly released data from Gallup suggests citizens in many countries are becoming less tolerant of migrants, led by European nations on the frontlines of the recent years of refugee and asylum-seeker inflows.

While Gallup placed some European countries as the least-accepting of migrants overall, the study's authors point to Latin America as a source of the world generally becoming less tolerant of migrants in recent years.

"Many of the countries leading the global downturn have been on the receiving end of the mass exodus of Venezuelans fleeing the humanitarian crisis in their country," write Neli Esipova, Julie Ray and Anita Pugliese.

Scores also declined in India, the study found, a nation where controversial laws went into effect in late 2019 that provided paths to citizenship for migrants - excluding Muslims.

Conversely, the Gallup index ranked Canada as the most-accepting country for migrants, followed by Iceland, New Zealand, Australia and Sierra Leone. Perhaps surprisingly, the United States, a country riven by immigration politics, was ranked as the sixth most-accepting country for migrants, followed by Burkina Faso, Sweden, Chad, Ireland and Rwanda.

Acceptance of migrants did increase in some parts of the world, the Gallup study noted. Moldova registered the largest increase in acceptance in the Gallup index, followed, by Pakistan, Chile, Afghanistan and Kosovo. The Gallup study also noted that attitudes toward migrants noticeably improved in Poland, one of many EU countries that opposed the United Nations' migration pact in 2018.

Gallup's migration index authors say the ranking is based on three questions that Gallup asked survey respondents in 140 countries in 2016 and 2017 and updated again in 145 countries in 2019. The questions asked whether people think migrants living in their country, becoming their neighbors and marrying into their families are good things or bad things.

The new EU plan, backed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and announced on Wednesday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, would oblige EU member countries to either accept refugees and asylum-seekers or be responsible for returning people whose applications were rejected. A country would receive 10,000 euros ($11,750) from the bloc's budget per adult taken in. Nations that fail to honor their commitments would face infringement proceedings in EU courts that could lead to hefty fines.

The EU plan announced on Wednesday also comes after years of disputes between the bloc's member states on how to handle refugees and migrants, most of whom have fled war in Syria, Afghanistan and across Africa. The arrival in 2015 of more than 1 million migrants sparked one of the greatest political crises in the EU and fueled anti-migrant politics in countries such as Hungary and Poland.

"The old system to deal with it in Europe no longer works," said von der Leyen of the European Commission, The Associated Press reported. The new plan, she added, offers Europe "a fresh start."

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The European Union announced on Wednesday plans to revamp its migration policies and create a comprehensive system across its 27 member states for handling refugees and asylum-seekers. But will EU member countries accept the reforms? Newly released data from Gallup suggests citizens in many countries are becoming less tolerant of migrants, led by European nations on the frontlines of the recent years of refugee and asylum-seeker inflows.

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This is a quote on refugees as a whole. It is important because it explains how refugees don't want to leave the places they call home and their businesses as well but are forced to.

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This is a movie cover for a movie on two international agents and them using a deserted retreat in Sudan as a cover for smuggling refugees into Israel in the 1980s. This movie gives a glimpse into the process of refugees escaping their countries of origin to find a safe haven and the dangers that come with it.

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This is a radio show that supports refugees and gives a voice to those who normally wouldn't have one. It is important cause it helps refugees voice out the problems and struggles we may not normally know.

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Refugee Radio - supporting refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants

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Refugee Radio is a charity that supports refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants. We run community projects targeting mental health, isolation and social exclusion. We also use radio and music to give a voice to this who do not have one.

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This is a cover to a times magazine of two Syrian refugees in Germany. This shows how even when refugees reach Europe they still go through many struggles, whether that means trying to assimilate to the cultures they're now part of or trying to find a true home to settle.

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These are general statistics about refugees from Central African Republic all the way to Ukraine. It discusses from education for refugees to the amount of refugees displaced from several different countries. It helps understand the scale of the refugee situation.

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Noteworthy Facts and Statistics by Region/Country
Sub-Saharan Africa

The East and Horn of Africa, and Great Lakes region hosted nearly 5 million refugees at the end of 2022.

The region hosts 20 percent of the global refugee population and almost 85 percent of all refugees in the region live in Chad (592,800), Cameroon (473,900) and Niger (255,300).

Conflict in Sudan, beginning in April 2023, displaced 2.6 million people within Sudan and 738,000 others who fled to neighboring countries by July 2023.

In recent years, Honduras has experienced an increase in violence by organized criminal groups, locally called maras. El Salvador has seen decreased organized violence.

The number of refugees and Venezuelans displaced abroad grew in 2021, reaching 5.2 million by the end of the year.

By the end of 2022, an estimated 968,300 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were internally displaced or sought asylum in neighboring countries or countries in the Americas, as did 241,900 people identified as populations of concern.

By the end of 2022, Europe hosted 1 in 3 refugees in the world (36 percent). The number of refugees hosted in Europe rose from 7 million at the end of 2021 to
12.4 million at the end of 2022.

Turkey continues to be the world's largest refugee-hosting country, home to 3.6 million refugees or 10 percent of all people displaced across borders.

Germany hosted nearly 2.1 million people, 6 percent of all refugees globally.

In 2022, more than 159,000 people risked their lives trying to reach Europe by land and sea; more than 2,439 are dead or missing.

In response to the enormous scale of displacement by the war in Ukraine, EU member states and other European states granted temporary protection to millions of refugees from Ukraine.

As of May 2023, nearly 1.2 million Iraqis continue to be internally displaced and the country also hosts 273,700 refugees from other countries.

Although Iraqi IDP returnees, around 4.8 million as of May 2023, consistently outnumber those who are internally displaced, many struggle to reintegrate and still require humanitarian assistance.

By the end of 2022, there were around 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees.

As of April 2023, more than 97 percent of South Sudanese refugees are hosted in Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Outbreaks of violence led to 282,000 new internal displacements in 2022, increasing the total number of IDPs to 2.26 million as of April 2023.

Refugees from South Sudan continued to constitute the largest groups of returnees, with 151,300 returning in 2022.

Conflict in Syria reached its 12th year in 2022, over a decade.

Syrians accounted for almost 1 in 5 refugees globally, with 6.5 million hosted in 131
countries.

There are 13.5 million displaced Syrians, representing more than half of Syria's total population, with 6.8 million internally displaced by late 2022.

Over three-quarters of refugees, 77 percent, resided in neighboring countries including Türkiye (3.5 million), Lebanon (814,700) and Jordan (660,900).

Rohingya Refugee Emergency

The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar. The vast majority of Rohingya refugees are women and children, including newborn babies. Many others are elderly people requiring additional aid and protection.

1.2 million stateless Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar since the start of violence in 2017.

90 percent of Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh and Malaysia.

The war in Ukraine has captured global attention with more than 5 million Ukrainians displaced within their country and an additional 6.3 million displaced across borders as of June 2023.

More than 17 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance inside Ukraine.

Fighting in Yemen, already one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, has severely compounded needs arising from long years of poverty and insecurity.

In 2022, the internally displaced population in Yemen reached 4.5 million people, with displaced families facing an acute risk of famine.

Natural disasters have exacerbated conflict in Yemen, forcing Yemenis to flee multiple times.

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Millions of individuals have been forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. Learn more about the number of refugees from various regions and the countries in which they are most often resettling.

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This is an image of asylum seeker statistics for Australia. It relates to the topic of refugees because it shows statistics that give reason for refugees to seek asylum in Australia.

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This is an article on a former Iraqi refugee and the struggles he goes through trying to stay in Denmark and not get deported back to Iraq while also being married with a child. It helps us understand how even when these refugees reach safety, they still have many struggles trying to stay in these countries.

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Married to a Dane, with a Danish son, Khoshnaw Nameq has been refused asylum in Denmark but cannot be deported to Iraq because Iraq will accept only voluntary returns. Now in Italy, he refuses to give up on a legal future in Europe.

Protesters make their point outside the airport terminal in Copenaghen, Denmark. Aleksander Klug/NurPhoto via Getty Images

COPENHAGEN - Khoshnaw Nameq has watched his son grow up on the screen of his phone. It's been nine years since he left his home in Iraq to escape a death threat. It's been six years since his application for asylum was rejected in Denmark, three years since he married his Danish girlfriend, Christina, and nearly 18 months since his son, Kevin, was born.

Today the young father lives reluctantly in Italy, separated from his wife and child and trying to escape a particularly Danish form of limbo. Khoshnaw is among around 1,000 asylum seekers rejected by the Danish authorities. Many of them, like Khoshnaw, cannot be deported because their countries, including Iraq, will accept only voluntary returns, not deportations.

The "undeportables" are bound over to live in one of two "open departure centers." In October 2016, Khoshnaw was sent to Kaershovedgard, a facility set among the forests and cornfields of Jutland, northwest Denmark. Police control who goes in and out and a sign outside warns those approaching that the "area is monitored by video."

It's not a prison, nor has Khoshnaw been convicted of any crime. In 2012, the Danish authorities rejected his asylum claim. While lodging an appeal, he was sent to an asylum center near the capital, Copenhagen. There he met Christina and they dated for three years. During their courtship, Khoshnaw was sent to another open departure center, Sjaelsmark, in the north of Copenhagen, close to where she lived.

In 2015, the couple got married and after a few months they were expecting their first child. As Christina neared the end of her first trimester, the couple received a letter from the Danish Immigration Services informing them that Khoshnaw was being transferred to Kaershovedgard, 220 miles (350km) away.

When he explained to them that his wife was expecting a child, he was told that "rules are rules."

The rules dictate that after 5 p.m. no guests are accepted at Kaershovedgard, so Khoshnaw had to request permission to sleep at his wife's home. He had to give five days' notice. He cycled 5 miles (8km) to the train station then took a five-hour train ride to Copenhagen.

Asked what Europe means, he says it is a place where you don't fear "that someone is coming to kill you."

In December 2016, when Christina was pregnant, Khoshnaw applied unsuccessfully for special permission to get out of the center at any time. "I explained that I couldn't know which day my wife was going to give birth, but nothing."

To give himself a chance, he borrowed his wife's car and on April 1, 2017, he got the call from the hospital. He managed to get there before Kevin was born. "I was lucky. I stayed five days with them, without permission, and then came back to the center."

Having a Danish wife and a Danish son does not automatically entitle you to remain in Denmark. The application for family reunification needs to be submitted from the home country, not from Denmark. "The possibility of staying in Denmark is not guaranteed even if you are married and even if you have a child," says Eva Singer from the Danish Refugee Council.

"Iraq is not my country anymore," says Khoshnaw. He speaks perfect Danish and defines his way of thinking as "European." Asked what Europe means, he says it is a place where you don't fear "that someone is coming to kill you."

Khoshnaw's father was an officer in a Kurdish anti-terrorist unit under the wing of the U.S. Army in Iraq. But when in 2008 Iraq's Parliament released thousands of prisoners, Khoshnaw's family became a target. That year, their house in Kirkuk was attacked.

In 2010, his father was shot and wounded by suspected terrorists while driving home. When Khoshnaw visited him in the hospital, his father told him, "Tomorrow you are getting out of Iraq." He had received a letter that read: "We can't get you, but we can kill your son Khoshnaw."

Khoshnaw crossed Turkey, Greece, Italy and Germany and arrived in Denmark, planning to reach friends of his father's in Finland and claim asylum there. But a police raid in Copenhagen cut short the plan. "The police asked me for my passport (and) I said I didn't have anything," he remembers.

The Danish police took his fingerprints and he applied for asylum in Denmark. According to the Dublin regulation, an asylum seeker has to apply for asylum in the first country where the fingerprints are registered. For a year and a half he lived in a house paid for by the Danish government, while waiting for an interview with the asylum service.

Then in 2012 he was rejected. They told him it was safe for him to go to the north of Iraq. "Had it been a safe place for me, my father wouldn't have sent me to Europe," he points out.

Under the Danish Aliens Act, rejected asylum seekers who do not volunteer to return are sent to a detention center. But when the return is "not foreseeable," the alien is obliged to remain indefinitely in one of the open departure centers until they volunteer to leave the country.

The E.U.'s Returns Directive established a six-month maximum period of detention, but the Danish government does not consider people like Khoshnaw to be detained because "they are free to leave the departure center at any time as long as they fulfill their obligations (for instance, reporting to the police)," according to an email from the Danish ministry of immigration.

Asked about the rejected asylum seekers who stay for years in these centers, the immigration ministry said that if rejected asylum seekers stayed, "it was because they refused to comply with the authority's decision to leave the country."

Khoshnaw lived in Kaershovedgard for over a year and got the message. The center was "designed to make us feel depressed," he says.

According to the ministry of immigration, the purpose of the centers is "to send a clear signal to the aliens that they do not have a future in Denmark, and to motivate them to contribute to their return."

Khoshnaw lived in Kaershovedgard for over a year and got the message. The center was "designed to make us feel depressed," he says. Every month, Khoshnaw would have an interview with the police. They would threaten to put him in jail if he did not return to Iraq and he would answer, "Whatever you do, I don't care, I am not giving up."

Eventually, he had to give up. After a year of requesting permits to cross Denmark to stay a few hours with his wife and son, Khoshnaw could not take it anymore. "Without my son I couldn't live in Denmark like that," he says.

During the winter, when Kevin or Christina were sick, he would overstay at her home, which led immigration services to restrict his leave permits. Had he kept disobeying the rules, he risked prison.

In December 2017 he absconded from the center, making his way to Italy, where he has once again applied for asylum. Under the Dublin regulation, Italy should send him back to Denmark - where his fingerprints were first recorded. But his lawyer has lodged an appeal in Rome while they await a decision. In Italy, unlike Denmark, asylum seekers can work.

Khoshnaw got a job in a hotel bar. After eight years in Denmark being unable to work and languishing in a departure center, he has regained some sense of normality. He gets up in the morning at a home provided by a Catholic charity and heads to work. "The only thing I don't have is my family," he says.

"Every time I asked him, 'Kevin do you want to give me a hug?' he is always, like, opening his arms and hugging."

They talk every day, Khoshnaw says. Three days after Khoshnaw left Denmark, Kevin started crawling. Last July, Christina and Kevin visited Khoshnaw in Italy and for a week they lived like a normal family. When he met them at the airport, Khoshnaw asked Kevin, "Do you want to come to your father?" Kevin gave him his hand. "It was very nice to know that he did not forget me."

"Every time I asked him, 'Kevin do you want to give me a hug?' he is always, like, opening his arms and hugging," says Khoshnaw. He misses holding him. The future is uncertain and Italy could send him back to Denmark. Khoshnaw is scared of ending up in prison.

Despite being forcibly separated from his wife and son, Khoshnaw is still thankful for his safe life in Europe. Earlier this year, after so-called Islamic State militants launched an attack on Kirkuk, his parents sought refuge in Turkey.

A death threat separated him from his family in Iraq. Migration laws separate him from his family in Denmark. Still, he keeps a positive attitude: "One day everything will be good ... just nobody knows when."

Until that day comes, he watches his son grow up on the screen of his phone.

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Surviving Denmark's Open Prisons for 'Undeportables'

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Married to a Dane, with a Danish son, Khoshnaw Nameq has been refused asylum in Denmark but cannot be deported to Iraq because Iraq will accept only voluntary returns. Now in Italy, he refuses to give up on a legal future in Europe.

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This is a ted talk video discussing refugees and for many their unsuccessful attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea to safety. This is important in understanding the dangerous routes which refugees must take to get to safety.

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A boat carrying 500 refugees sunk at sea. The story of two survivors | Melissa Fleming

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This is a video that was posted to twitter by the international rescue committee. It discusses a former refugee camp in Greece that was destroyed by a fire. This video helps us better understand the trials and difficulties in which many refugees pass through.

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On Sept 8, a fire destroyed Moria camp on Lesvos, Greece, devastating 12,000 refugees—including Afghan refugee Rahima and her family.

The IRC was there to help, and now Rahima is supporting us in protecting people from COVID-19 in a new camp. This #GivingTuesday, her story:

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On Sept 8, a fire destroyed Moria camp on Lesvos, Greece, devastating 12,000 refugees—including Afghan refugee Rahima and her family.

The IRC was there to help, and now Rahima is supporting us in protecting people from COVID-19 in a new camp. This #GivingTuesday, her story: https://t.co/3JT790pyGx

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On Sept 8, a fire destroyed Moria camp on Lesvos, Greece, devastating 12,000 refugees—including Afghan refugee Rahima and her family.

The IRC was there to help, and now Rahima is supporting us in protecting people from COVID-19 in a new camp. This #GivingTuesday, her story: pic.twitter.com/3JT790pyGx
— IRC - International Rescue Committee (@RESCUEorg) December 2, 2020

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On Sept 8, a fire destroyed Moria camp on Lesvos, Greece, devastating 12,000 refugees—including Afghan refugee Rahima and her family.

The IRC was there to help, and now Rahima is supporting us in protecting people from COVID-19 in a new camp. This #GivingTuesday, her story: https://t.co/3JT790pyGx

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On Sept 8, a fire destroyed Moria camp on Lesvos, Greece, devastating 12,000 refugees—including Afghan refugee Rahima and her family.

The IRC was there to help, and now Rahima is supporting us in protecting people from COVID-19 in a new camp. This #GivingTuesday, her story: https://t.co/3JT790pyGx

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On Sept 8, a fire destroyed Moria camp on Lesvos, Greece, devastating 12,000 refugees—including Afghan refugee Rahima and her family.

The IRC was there to help, and now Rahima is supporting us in protecting people from COVID-19 in a new camp. This #GivingTuesday, her story:

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This is a picture I got from an Instagram post by deutschland_de. It is the statistics for asylum applications in Germany for 2019.  It helps us understand the age, gender and country of origin of the refugees coming into Germany.

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This article from The New York Times, is on the current unrest occurring in Ethiopia between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's liberation front (TPLF) from Northern Ethiopia. It has become a rather bloodied conflict and the article discusses how many innocent civilians have been killed and displaced in the Tigray region due to this conflict.

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Abiy Ahmed, the country's prime minister, has become the protagonist of a familiar story in Africa, which is written in blood by politicians in pursuit of their ideologies and power.

By

Mr. Addonia is a novelist.

Tens of thousands of Ethiopians have been displaced by the continuing fighting in Tigray Province. Credit... Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

On Nov. 6, an Ethiopian friend messaged me on WhatsApp: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had ordered airstrikes against the regional government in the country's northernmost Tigray Province, bordering Eritrea and Sudan. I looked up from my phone screen in a daze. My friend was raging at the return of violence. "Why don't these men give us a break?"

My father is Ethiopian and my mother is Eritrean. Their countries were at war for decades: Eritrean fighters fought for independence from Ethiopia from 1961 to 1991. My parents' countries fought a second war between 1998 and 2000, which killed about 70,000 people.

A large part of my Ethiopian family, originally from the Welkait and Gondar regions of the country, lives in Humera, a border town in Tigray. The Tigrean ethnic group, which makes up about 6 percent of Ethiopia's 110 million people, form a majority in the region.

Since Mr. Ahmed took office as prime minister in April 2018, the relationship between him and the Tigrean leadership has been defined by hostility and resentment. The Tigrean leadership had dominated Ethiopia's ruling coalition since 1991. Although they brought economic prosperity, many accused the Tigray People's Liberation Front of large-scale corruption and of using ethnicity to divide and weaken the opposition, to the point that Ethiopian politics was driven by ethnicity, not ideology or economic policy. The mass protests against Tigrean dominance led by the Oromo, the largest ethnic group in the country, and the Amhara, the second largest, saw Mr. Ahmed replacing the Tigrean leadership.

Prime Minister Ahmed started the military offensive after accusing the T.P.L.F. of attacking a federal military camp in Tigray. He declared a state of emergency there, cut off its internet and telephone lines, and blocked the roads. Soon after the airstrikes, the Ethiopian army and the T.P.L.F., which runs the regional government, fought intense battles in and around Humera, my father's hometown.

I wrote to a cousin on Facebook to check on my aunt, her daughters and our extended family living in the border town. "My dad was visiting Humera when the fighting started but he managed to escape to Sudan," my cousin told me. "A lot of people managed to flee to Sudan. And a lot have lost their lives sadly. Aunt and her daughters are all fine."

Hundreds, possibly thousands have been killed, and about 40,000 people have already sought refuge in Sudan. United Nations agencies fear about 200,000 people might flee to Sudan in the coming months.

Like many other prime ministers and presidents in Africa, Mr. Ahmed had become the protagonist of a familiar story that can be written only in a familiar way, as if plagiarized from another African country, written in blood by politicians in pursuit of their ideologies and power at any cost.

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Ethiopian families at a refugee camp in Qadarif, Sudan. Credit... Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

Mr. Ahmed was meant to be a new beginning. He promised to heal Ethiopia. He had the smile of Thomas Sankara, the charisma of Patrice Lumumba, and it seemed he embodied the patience for peace of Nelson Mandela.

Reforms followed swiftly. He appointed women to more than half of the ministerial positions in his government, invited a prominent dissident to return home and head Ethiopia's election board, and ordered the release of political prisoners. He allowed partial privatization of state-owned companies. Journalists returned to work with their pens as free as the air of their country. And he made peace with President Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, ending one of Africa's longest-running conflicts, for which he received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

Like many Eritreans, I couldn't fully celebrate my parents' two countries making peace. Mr. Afewerki is a dictator who has been terrorizing Eritreans and jailing fellow writers such as Dawit Isaac and Seyoum Tsehaye in containers placed in the desert. Mr. Afewerki's reign of terror was given undeserved legitimacy.

At home, Mr. Ahmed entered into a direct confrontation with the T.P.L.F. and its leader Debretsion Gebremichael when he dissolved the ruling coalition and created a new party, the Prosperity Party, and purged key T.P.L.F. ministers. The feud reached a dangerous level when the T.P.L.F. held a regional vote defying Mr. Ahmed's nationwide election ban because of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Nov. 9, a few days into the fighting, hundreds of non-Tigrean civilians were killed in Mai-Kadra, a town in Tigray. An investigation by Amnesty International confirmed the massacre of a very large number of civilians and cited witnesses who alleged the involvement of the Tigrean special police. Many of those killed in Mai-Kadra were from Welkite.

The news of the massacre brought back a childhood memory. One day in 1976, as my mother and my relatives recalled, our family was in Om Hajer, the town where I was born, on the Eritrean side of the border, about 20 miles from Humera. Rebel armies, including the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, which was fighting for the territory's independence from Ethiopia, moved around our hometown and other areas on the border. Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Ethiopian dictator, vowed to unleash his terror on our town and its inhabitants.

That day in 1976, the Ethiopian Army ordered the people to gather in a field to hear an important government official deliver a speech. I often imagine my family preparing for the "important event," but I quickly snap out of it. I do allow myself to imagine my father, a trader from a wealthy, landowning Ethiopian family, adoringly staring at my mother, the daughter of an Eritrean tailor, as she tied me to her back. My father held my brother's hand, and my elder sisters followed us as we headed to the field. A family made up of two warring countries, love gluing its conflicted history into one.

There was no Ethiopian official but instead, soldiers with Kalashnikovs and machine guns waiting for us in the field. The overflowing Mereb river behind us blocked escape. Up to 400 died that day, including some of my family members. My parents survived the massacre but soon after, my father was murdered, under circumstances unclear to us to this day. We fled the country to Sudan and lived in two refugee camps for eight years, where I was raised by my Eritrean grandmother.

As the war started spilling into Eritrea - the T.P.L.F. has fired missiles at Asmara, the Eritrean capital, supposedly retaliating for Eritrea's sending troops to support the Ethiopian military - I was increasingly worried about my grandmother and my mother, who live in Eritrea.

I called them repeatedly but I couldn't get through. Being half Eritrean and half Ethiopian is to have your heart ripped in two, your mind split in pieces, your head continuously checking over both sides of the frontier. It is realizing that our bitter history seems to always shadow the future.

After repeated attempts I was able to reach my grandmother. "Just be patient," she said. "Everything will be fine." How long will we keep pretending that these words will shelter us from the machetes, the knives, the bombs?

I always fear that the Ethiopian politicians, the T.P.L.F. and the Eritrean leaders, all former soldiers, will not hesitate to unleash their military might against their own people, leading to numerous deaths and displacement.

Mr. Ahmed's military is preparing for an offensive on Mekele, the capital of Tigray Province, which is still controlled by the T.PL.F. On Sunday, an Ethiopian military spokesman issued a chilling warning: "We want to send a message to the public in Mekele to save yourselves from any artillery attacks and free yourselves from the junta ... After that, there will be no mercy."

In the past two weeks, I have been looking at the pictures of refugees fleeing Tigray and waiting outside the United Nations refugee agency office at Hamdayet in Sudan, the place through which my family and I passed decades ago, on our way to a refugee camp further inland. I was struck by the eyes of young children. Their gazes retreat and shift, as if their wide eyes have already become the trenches into which they will hide their childhood.

I imagine their nights in the refugee camp, so familiar to me, feeling afraid, alone, their bodies shaking at the terror of what they saw, their minds about to age beyond their years. I wish I could speak to them, console them. I would also tell them that you will become bearers of a daunting history and the future of our countries because the ruins you have witnessed will give you the determination to continue and lend power to your voices to end these cycles of war.

Sulaiman Addonia is an Ethiopian-Eritrean-British writer and the author of the novel "Silence Is My Mother Tongue."
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Opinion | I Was a Child Refugee. Another War in Ethiopia Is Forcing More Children Into the Camps.

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Abiy Ahmed, the country's prime minister, has become the protagonist of a familiar story in Africa, which is written in blood by politicians in pursuit of their ideologies and power. By Mr. Addonia is a novelist. On Nov.