Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece on motherhood without borders
USA for UNHCR/Nicholas Feeney
Once you are a mother, the distance between your child and another woman's child collapses. It just does. You cannot help it.
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I have five children. I have held them through nightmares, celebrated their smallest victories, and worried about their futures in the particular way that only mothers understand, that low hum of love and anxiety that never fully goes away.
It is that same feeling that undid me in Rwanda.
Why motherhood connects us across every border
I was visiting refugee scholars supported by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, through its DAFI scholarship program, which provides higher education opportunities to refugee students who would otherwise have no path to university. These extraordinary young women are pursuing degrees against odds most of us will never face and can barely imagine. As a founding member of USA for UNHCR’s Women’s Committee, I was there to listen and learn, to hear their stories and to remind them that the world cares.
I brought my son Constantine with me to do the same. Sitting with these mothers and their daughters, I kept recognizing something I knew by heart. The pride. The worry. The way a mother’s eyes follow her child across a room. I wanted Constantine to see that the love between a mother and her child is one of the few things in this world that does not change shape across borders.
For me, that is most obvious when you see mothers and their babies. There is always a mother holding one, and I always gravitate to her. I didn’t even realize I did it at first, until other people on the trip started pointing it out. I don’t think it’s accidental. Motherhood rewires something in you, permanently. Once you have held your own child and understood, in your bones, what it means to be responsible for another human life, you cannot unsee it in others. You recognize it instantly. The way a mother adjusts her grip. The way she scans a room. The way she holds her child a little closer when a stranger approaches, and then, deciding you are safe, relaxes just slightly and lets you in.
Those are the moments that remind me how much we have in common.
A country of remarkable women
Rwanda is a country of remarkable women displaying awe-inspiring resilience. The women I met, young refugee scholars studying computer science, education, medicine, carry themselves with a quiet determination that is almost startling. One of them, Keza, in her final year studying computer science, said something I have not stopped thinking about: “When you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”
She said it simply, without performance. As if it were just a fact she had lived, knew and understood, deep in her bones. She is right. But sitting with her, I kept thinking about what comes before the education. What comes before the scholarship, the classroom, the degree. What comes before any of it? I think the answer is: a mother who believed her daughter deserved a different future.
So many of the young women I met spoke about their mothers. Mothers who walked with them through displacement. Mothers who pushed them toward school when everything else was falling apart. Mothers who held the family together while the world outside came undone. The scholarship lit up these young women’s lives. But the mother was there first, in the dark, keeping the flame alive.
I think about this when people ask me why I advocate for refugee women. Why show up? Why travel to Rwanda, why sit in classrooms and listen to stories that are sometimes very hard to hear?
Because I am a mother. And once you are a mother, the distance between your child and another woman’s child collapses. It just does. You cannot help it.
When I am invited to hold a baby in Rwanda, or sit with a young mother who has fled conflict with nothing but her children and her will to survive, I am responding to something that was instilled in me the moment I became a mother myself. The recognition of what is at stake. The understanding of what a mother will do, what any mother will do, to give her child a chance. That is not unique to me or any nationality, background or circumstance. It is the most universal value that I – and every other mother – knows.
The ripple effect of a scholarship
UNHCR’s DAFI scholarship program represents something profound. It’s more than an education. It’s a signal to a young woman that she matters and so does her potential. It says the world has not written her off and in fact believes in her power to change communities.
But it’s about so much more than just that scholar. When someone, somewhere, decides to invest in the future of a young woman, rather than look away, the scholar does not keep that gift to herself. Something extraordinary happens….entire communities start to feel it too. Every scholar I met spoke about going back to the community they were raised in. Mentoring younger girls. Returning to teach, heal, educate and build. The ripple effect of a single act of investment is almost impossible to calculate.
Mothers understand this instinctively. You do not raise a child for yourself or by yourself. You raise a child for the world and with your community. Every investment you make in them flows outward, into friendships, communities, families they will one day build themselves. Educating a refugee woman is the same act of faith. It is saying: your future matters, and so does everything it will touch.
I believe deeply in the power of that investment and I am asking you to join me. Through USA for UNHCR’s Building Better Futures campaign, our goal is to help 1,000 refugee girls reach university. It is an ambitious goal. It is also, when you think about what a single educated woman can set in motion, an almost modest one.
If you are a mother, you already understand why this matters. You know what it feels like to want the world to be safe and full of possibility for your child. These mothers want the same thing and their daughters deserve the same chance.
Once you sit with a young woman who has survived what could have broken her and is still reaching for something better, you understand immediately why this work cannot wait. Please join me. Futures are literally at stake.
To learn more or to donate, visit UNrefugees.org.
Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece serves on USA for UNHCR’s Women’s Committee. She recently traveled to Rwanda to meet scholars supported by UNHCR’s DAFI higher education scholarship program.
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