Why The Thai Cave Rescue Drew So Much Attention Compared To Other Crises

Rohingya children carrying firewood into the Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh. Refugees have stripped almost all the area vegetation to use in cooking fires.

Allison Joyce for NPR

Like millions of global citizens, Abraham Leno has been riveted by the story of the 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in a cave in Thailand.

“I sat around the radio with my family and we wanted to hear the recent updates of the kids, every little detail,” he says. “To see all the governments sending their best divers, giving them equipment, offering their moral support — it was a beautiful thing to see.”

But Leno has another perspective. As a youth, he spent ten years in refugee camps in Guinea. Now working at the American Refugee Committee, he wishes that the media had paid more attention to his plight and his fellow refugees: “It would have shed a better light to create the understanding necessary to help us.”