An unarmed refugee, a machine gun to his head, and chaotic noise unfolding into the question— “Are you hurt, miss?” As Nairobi patrolmen encircled me and held down the Somalian refugee, I realized that they assumed I was in danger. Many refugees like Taban, who are victims of inequalities, are treated suspiciously and encounter violations to their right to a dignified existence. Straying the streets of Nairobi, Taban’s face held profound tenacity. Forced to persistently overstep the limits of legality to even exist, survival itself reveals his continued battle against the unfair cards that were dealt. Recognizing my objections, the patrolmen eventually retreated, failing to see Taban’s fragilities as he reached for my leftover lunch.
Today, Taban leads a painful life despite his name meaning happiness. Will Taban’s crises ever conclude? Who voices his concerns? How can such structural disadvantages be confronted? Ruminations like these have, over time, taken a weight of their own. Such incidents and questions strengthen my dream to enable individuals to shape their lives with dignity so that no one is left behind.
This is a dream that I arrived at after rigorous exposure, continuous work, and long reflections. As an undergraduate, I had the choice to major in politics or film studies. For weeks, I walked around with the form that I would have to turn in, wrestling to make a choice. During this time,
I undertook a research assignment at the Mandala slum settlement in Mumbai. Amidst the rubbish and wreckage, I saw a mother lull her ailing baby. There were no doors, electricity, or medicine. That’s when I decided I didn’t care about making a spectacle out of such intimate and vulnerable moments. I cared about supporting this mother to live self-sufficiently. Right there, on that doorstep, I filled my form.
Since then, my journey has cut through myriads of stories at the juncture of disasters, institutional instabilities, and structural poverty. I have seen a FARC guerrilla surrender his last weapon, had tea with a Kerala flood widow, stayed under UN office lockdown during an Al-Shabaab attack, witnessed hyperinflation erase the life savings of a Venezuelan family, and held the hands of a dying child in a palliative care. My mind is effectively imprisoned by the enduring portraits of these individuals arrested in their circumstances. As a grassroots activist, UNESCO youth leader, and a policy student at Harvard, I have been actively advocating and localizing SDGs to solve challenges of inequality and marginalization. Over time, in the midst of all this, I have come to recognize that we are all shaped by similar problems and promises, committing myself as a global citizen to solving common challenges instead of failing into unhelpful binaries of us and them.
Today, I believe that youth can better involve themselves in promoting sustainable living if they move beyond seeing SDGs as the monopoly of the UN, or as theoretical concepts confined to textbooks. A very myopic (but often prevalent) view that I have encountered is the apathetic belief that only certain international institutions have the mandate and responsibility to achieve the SDGs.
Therefore, I invite every youth reading this story to transform the narrative surrounding SDGs from a long list of remote goals to passionate dreams with set targets. Let’s together build a world where Taban fits his name and the Mandala mother has access to vaccines. These are hopeful forms of an alternative tomorrow—one where human dignity and endurance are collectively realized.
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