Aboard an overloaded ship carrying more than 500 refugees, a young woman becomes an unlikely hero. This single, powerful story, told by Melissa Fleming of the UN's refugee agency, gives a human face to the sheer numbers of human beings trying to escape to better lives ... as the refugee ships keep coming ...

Today's refugee crisis is the biggest since World War II, and it's growing. When this talk was given, 50 million people had been forcefully displaced from their homes by conflict and war; as of 2021, the number grew to more than 82 million. There were three million Syrian refugees in 2014; now there are 5.5 million languishing in neighboring cou...

Melissa Fleming sheds light on their devastating plight and remarkable resilience of refugees.

Not since World War II have so many people been forcibly displaced by war and persecution. Talks on why it's important to help refugees thrive, and personal stories of starting over.

The headlines on the front page always change. But these talks — on the seismic phenomenon underlying them — will give you fresh insight.

“These are very difficult times to be a refugee,” says the UN Refugee Agency’s Melissa Fleming. She gives some stats that are hard to swallow: Not since WWII have there been so many people on the run; by the end of today 32,000 people will have been forcibly displaced from their homes; currently there are 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon...

Get exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to TEDSummit inside our Facebook Live Studio. Join some of your favorite TED speakers for conversational interviews -- and you can ask them your questions in the comments. See everything on TED's Facebook page as it happens: Here's the schedule: Sunday, June 26 4pm Eastern: TED speaker coaches s...

About this event: We will show Melissa Fleming TEDGlobal 2014 Talk and then we will have a moderated and open discussion by the General Coordinator of Cruz Roja Española where the word and debate is on the audience hands to talk about the real barriers refugees find and how as individuals, organizations and countries we could and should help refugees to rebuild t...

Neil Gaiman writes stunningly original stories that can make the skin crawl and the teeth chatter. But his latest work might sound familiar: it’s an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm breadcrumb dropper, Hansel & Gretel. A collaboration between author Neil Gaiman and illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti for Toon Books, Hansel & Gretel is a swirl ...

So you want to make a difference in the world? Well, first you need a plan. In this session, we turn from technology to social good, with four speakers armed with roadmaps to solving some of society's thorniest problems. The speakers who’ll appear in this session: Sustainability activist Tasso Azevedo has helped reduce the rate of deforestat...

About this event: You are cordially invited to the next TEDxTheHague salon at our brand new venue! Our May edition — themed On the Other Hand — is curated by TEDxTheHague. There are — at least — two sides to every story. Which one do you want to believe? Which one suits you best? Which one tells the story you're already telling yourself? We'll explore this them...

"Syrians are just looking for a quiet place where nobody hurts you," says one refugee, who survived a capsized escape craft on his dangerous journey. Clarice Holt, an illustrator in London, was moved by the simple, powerful truths she heard in Melissa Fleming’s TED Talk, "Let's help refugees thrive" -- and made these beautiful illustrations to s...

Day 2 of TEDGlobal brought a slew of fascinating talks. Below, a few of today's highlights... Ameenah Gurib-Fakim makes us wonder what a "monkey apple" tastes like. Early this morning, biodiversity scientist revealed some of the amazing plants with unusual medicinal properties that grow in the Mascarene Islands. She dropped a pretty incre...

The theme of this session is "Blueprints." And so we hear from speakers who have that all-too-easy-to-overlook first step: a plan. Brazil is named for a tree, says Tasso Azevedo. And thus, it is a good place to be a forester. 12% of the world’s forests are in the country, primarily in the Amazon, which plays a vital role in global climate...

On the day he was released from his cell, Vincent Cochetel sported a beard “that would be trendy today.” It was not a fashion decision. In 1998, Cochetel, the director of the Bureau for Europe for the UN High Commission on Refugees, was kidnapped in Chechnya and held hostage for 317 days, most of that time chained to a bed. Last week, in a c...

On the day he was released from his cell, Vincent Cochetel sported a beard “that would be trendy today.” It was not a fashion decision. In 1998, Cochetel, the director of the Bureau for Europe for the UN High Commission on Refugees, was kidnapped in Chechnya and held hostage for 317 days, most of that time chained to a bed. Last week, in a c...

TEDGlobal 2014 has officially begun! Today brings our famous TED Fellows sessions, full of fresh ideas from our global network of iconoclasts. As we start to cover this conference here on the TED Blog, on Twitter and on Instagram, here's a look at what speakers are sharing online -- to bring you backstage with them. Geo-scientist Andrés R...

Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week: The cascading effect of small lies. Tali Sharot is the senior author on a paper published in Nature Neuroscience that sheds light on the possible slippery-slope effect of telling small, self-serving lies. Using an fMRI scanning device to monitor the a...

The number is 110: One hundred and ten past and new TED speakers are part of our newest conference, TEDSummit, happening in Banff, Canada, 26–30 June 2016. And you are invited to join us! Some of the most popular TED speakers of all time, including Dan Pink, David Gallo, Esther Perel, Kelly and Jane McGonigal, Pico Iyer and dozens more...

Want to do something to help the world’s more than 25 million refugees? Any business -- no matter its size -- can give them a boost, says Melissa Fleming, chief spokesperson for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. On Saturday, June 9, I had the honor of co-hosting the first-ever TEDx event held at a refugee camp -- it took place at Kenya’s Kakuma Cam...

Melissa Fleming of the UN's Refugee Agency shares some ways to help refugees right now. When a million refugees showed up in Europe this past year, the world began to take notice of a problem that has been steadily growing before our eyes. Ten years ago, 38 million people had been driven from their homes because of war or persecution; right now...

TEDGlobal 2014 is themed “South!,” and it will be the first official TED conference held in South America. Focusing on themes emerging around the world, this conference will take a bold look at the ideas flowing from the Global South, discussing innovation as well as social and political issues, art as well as education, resources as well as tec...

Innovation happens at the critical junctures between success and failure, risk and reward, truth and daring, past and future. At TEDGlobal>Geneva, in a former power plant right in the middle of the Rhone river in downtown Geneva, the conference gathered 900 attendees from nearly 80 countries. Against a stage backdrop designed by the student...

From tech to self-help via poetry, fiction and graphic novels, here are the books you need to read. What’s the one book you're always thrilled to discover that someone else has read? We posed that question to TED speakers -- and, well, they geeked out, offering us a list of hidden gems that wouldn’t typically crop up on a holiday shopping list....