‘Hope to move forward’: One refugee’s story of resolve

There was a point in Tasmida’s decade-plus-long odyssey from persecution in Myanmar to a cramped, stifling refugee camp along a sewage ditch in southeast Delhi when the aspiring human rights lawyer almost gave up.

“After we arrived in Delhi there was a time when I felt no hope. I didn’t know Hindi, and the situation seemed very difficult,” says Tasmida, who arrived with her family in Delhi’s Rohingya refugee community from Bangladesh in 2012. “But then I remembered that getting my education was the only way to improve our situation here and one day help our country. Then I felt sure again, and I had hope to move forward.”

That hope, and a determination honed by a decaderising anti-refugee sentiments – have paid off.

The new face of refugees   Nurturing othersDiscouragement, and determination