Refugees: Who are they? The old woman with her bloody feet in worn-out sandals? The mother in fear? The crying child? How do we describe their importance in our lives? The media's description does not fit -- they are described as a sad existence of running people, masses of scared people crossing a border. A little baby delivered from one stranger to the next, with the question, "Does anyone know whom this one belongs to?" The face of war and the faces of its victims are always nameless, and after a while we have seen them too often.

I think of my friends in Pristina, whom I visited one and a half years ago, and the sweet memory of sharing their life and their home-baked bread with honey in the morning. The father of the family took us around the city and the surroundings during our days there, and he told us his story of Kosovo. He said that when it explodes in Kosovo, then all is over. Now their house -- their home -- is gone, and they live under a tractor, eight of them.

UNHCR Photo

Then I phone my friends in Belgrade who, the media tells me, are the enemies of my friends from Kosovo (although they were the ones who drove me there that day). And all they say is, "Our trees are in full bloom, and the heaven is clear. But we dread that, since we don't care to smell the flowers anymore and a clear sky is illuminating us from above."

I remember my visit to Albania; [it was] so hard for me then, a few years ago, to enter. Today, it is easier. Albania welcomes so many of the individual lives we call refugees. One farmer has 48 of them in his stable and a baby was just born. Albania is the poorest country in Europe, but their spontaneous solidarity contrasts with the official and individual complacency from other countries. ... I watch the stock market on CNN: the dollar is up; so is the Norwegian krona. The stocks for the industry of weapons are up 20 per cent; the price of human life is going down, but it is not noted on the stock market.

She is 12 years old and she lost her life 50 metres from the border. Her name was Zejnete. "Mama, please carry my rucksack for a while." Those were the last words Zejnete said. "She was suddenly running away from me", her mama said, "towards the border of Macedonia. On my first step after her, I found a landmine or it found me. And as I lay there in the dark, my four children cried, 'mama is dead, mama is dead.' And then I heard another explosion and a cry from Zejnete. I crawled to her and I held her, and that's when she asked me to take her rucksack, and then she lost consciousness. Her little brother carried her the last 50 metres to the border, but it was too late. Her blood kept falling from where her legs used to be. Me, her mother, I lost part of my tongue and my arm, and some of my legs. In the town across the border, where we hope for some peace, there is a new grave in the graveyard. At the end of the place, which turns towards Mecca, there is a piece of wood with the ballpoint written inscription, 'Zejnete Avdiv, 29-04-99 Mama'." There are not so many saints among us anymore, but with the horrible brutality in every corner of our world, the martyrs are created every day, somewhere.

There was a place called Theresienstadt during the Second World War. On the other side of that camp was Auschwitz. You go there today with sadness. They were there: the children, all the children. On the cobblestone streets, beds built high to hold many children. Some 15,000 children -- Jewish children -- came here before going to Auschwitz. A few -- actually 98 -- survived and could tell the story. What remained after the other 14,902 dead children were diaries and notebooks, drawings and poems. There, you will find so many tears from the little ones, so much need, such unimaginable longing in the words, and the belongings they left (the comfort they had sought for themselves) for us to find, when they, the children, were accompanied to their last station, Auschwitz. But if you read through some of the children's texts, you would be stunned. You are asked not to hate, to leave your hate. You are asked to acknowledge the human equality: we are all of the same worth, whatever belief, whatever god, looks and language; the same worth, whatever the difference.

Walter Roth was one of the 15,000 children in Theresienstadt. We only know that he disappeared in Auschwitz (just 16 years old). One more important thing, he left us seven lines which shall live on -- seven lines which should be given to every school in the world as the most important lesson:

Even if we, through someone's terrible hate,
    Are asked to die,
We must never fill our heart with hate and anger.
Never love only our own.
Never despise those who are different by belief.
This shall be our most important law,
    Now and forever.

His words should follow us, as we watch little children with bare feet walking in the last snow of winter in Kosovo, hungry and fearful. These children cannot wait until all the agreements and all the solutions are made by the grown-ups. To these children, who are more than "refugees", we cannot say "tomorrow".

Their name is Today.

The UN Postal Administration on 9 November 2000 issued a set of stamps on the theme "Respect for Refugees", designed by Yuri Gevorgian of Armenia, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.