Why Joe and his siblings would sleep tied together with a rope

A new report has found a record number of people are now displaced around the world. Today, Joe White calls Australia home, but he will never forget his experience growing up as a refugee.

Joe White, left, (pictured here with one of his brothers) was born in a refugee camp and came to Australia as a child. Source: Supplied / Joe White

When Joe White was a young child living on the streets of Sudan, his mother used to tie him and his five siblings to her when they slept at night to keep them safe.

There would be three children on her left side and three on her right.

"We used to live outside a church and by night we slept on the streets," White said.

"There were attempted kidnaps on us at night."

White, whose real name is Tiluhun Hailu, was born in a refugee camp in Sudan after his family fled Ethiopia in the 1980s when conflict and drought resulted in one of the world's worst famines.

Joe White lived on the streets of Sudan for about three years. Source: Supplied / Joe White

White's father left when he was about seven years old, he said, and his mother struggled to support six children on her own.

The family left the camp in the hope of finding a better future in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, but life proved difficult.

"My mum would beg or would go through bins, or go to the market and try to sell tea or something to try and get enough coins for food," White said.

Record number of people displaced

Today, children make up 40 per cent of those forcibly displaced from their homelands, despite accounting for only 30 per cent of the world’s population.

That is among the findings in the UNHCR’s Global Trends in Forced Displacement 2022 report, which was released on Wednesday and stated such children were increasingly at risk of human rights violations.

The report from the UN's refugee agency estimated that by May 2023 a record 110 million people around the world would have become displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuses.

It found 35.3 million of those displaced in 2022 had crossed an international border to find safety, while 62.5 million people were displaced in their home countries due to conflict and violence.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said groups rushing to conflict and being too slow to find solutions resulted in "devastation, displacement, and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes”.

Last year, a little over half of all resettlement submissions facilitated by UNHCR were for children.

Joe White aged 13. Source: Supplied / Joe White

For White, arriving in suburban Perth in 1998 at the age of 11 was a transition to living without the fear he had dealt with on a daily basis, and a culture shock.

"We went in the house and I saw a bowl of apples on the dining table, and I just lost it. We all ran toward the bowl of apples and started grabbing them," he said.

"When we were homeless, there was a guy with a cart that sold apples and we used to always look at it and be like, 'we could never afford apples'. I was just like, 'wow'".

Joe White and his mother at one of his recent comedy shows. Source: Supplied / Joe White

White, who now works as a stand-up comedian in Australia, said performing comedy had been therapeutic and his way of dealing with his past.

Today he jokes about growing up as a refugee in Australia but said his jokes aren't about diminishing what he and his family went through. Instead, they are a celebration of his mother's strength in getting her family to where they are today.

White often donates a percentage of profits from his shows to the Katina Woodruff Children’s Foundation, which provides support to children who have recently arrived in Australia as refugees and asylum seekers.

White said he and his siblings were each still coming to terms with how the trauma they experienced as children impacts them today.

"We're all happy, we're smiling and everyone's like, 'you've got to survive,' but we know mentally, the impact is still there," he said.

Almost two million people are displaced within Sudan and Ethiopia today. The two countries are among the world’s least developed.

The UNHCR report said together the 46 least-developed countries in the world accounted for less than 1.3 per cent of global gross domestic product, yet hosted more than 20 per cent of all refugees worldwide in 2022.

That is down from 22 per cent in 2021 as many new refugees from Ukraine were hosted in high-income countries.

At the end of 2022, the number of refugees in the least-developed countries stood at seven million.

The war in Ukraine was the top driver of displacement in 2022 with the number of refugees from Ukraine soaring from 27,300 at the end of 2021 to 5.7 million at the end of 2022 – the fastest outflow of refugees anywhere since World War Two.

About nine million people have been displaced from European countries in the past 50 years and about three times that many from Africa.

Refugee Week is marked from 18-24 June. World Refugee Day is on 20 June.

Mental health support is available at beyondblue.org.au and on 1300 22 4636. Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.