«WHO ARE YOU REALLY RUNNING FROM» GEOPOLITICS OF FLIGHT AWAY, Cristina di Silvio

The fate of peoples forced to leave their homeland

Abstract: In a world torn apart by endless wars and humanitarian crises, flight has become the existential condition of our time. Today, over 123 million people live uprooted, forced to abandon their homes because of conflict, persecution, or climate disasters. From war-torn Sudan to Syria, consumed by fourteen years of fighting, to Europe wounded by the war in Ukraine, the modern map is redrawn around the borders of pain and human resilience. “Who are you really running from?” is not merely a title — it is a question echoing through every displaced people and every individual who, even by staying, finds themselves fleeing from within. As Alda Merini wrote, “One is saved only by returning — not backward, but inward.” Perhaps the truest frontier of the future will not be geographical, but interior: learning, as humanity, how to stay.

Keywords: #Migration #Exodus #Sudan #Syria #Ukraine #UNHCR #HumanitarianCrisis #War #Displacement #Geopolitics #HumanRights #AldaMerini #Flight #Return #GlobalSociety #CristinaDiSilvio #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasReview #ScientificReview #SocialSciences #EthicaSocietasUpli

italian version

FLIGHT AS A CONDITION

“Who are you really running from?” — someone once wrote. And then quoted Alda Merini, who never feared hard words: she let them fall like stones into water and waited in silence to hear the echo. “You never really escape from places,” she said. And she was right. You can change your city, your job, your company, even your accent. But if inside you remain the same, everything you left behind will find you again — maybe under another name, another face, but with the same knot in your throat. We run away out of exhaustion, or for fear of truly facing ourselves. We run to avoid feeling the weight of what we have not resolved. But escape, however elegant, is always a way of standing still. Salvation comes only by returning. Not backward, but inward — by looking straight at what hurts, without seeking an emergency exit.

Merini was no saint; she was alive. She knew that freedom is not conquered by going far away but by ceasing to lie to oneself. In the end, no one escapes from anyone. One simply learns, slowly, to stay.

Today, those words speak not just to an individual, but to all humanity. Millions are on the move, uprooted by wars, persecution, famine, and climate crises. According to the latest report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 123 million people live in a condition of forced displacement — as if two entire Italies had lost their homes. But the number alone says little: behind every figure is a voice unheard, a face unseen, a silence that weighs.

SUDAN — THE EXODUS OF SILENCE

In the heart of Africa, Sudan stands as the paradigm of the modern exodus.

Since 2023, conflict between the regular army and the RSF paramilitary forces has driven over 14 million people—nearly one-third of the population—from their homes. More than 11 million are internally displaced, trapped in a limbo of hunger and uncertainty. The roads to Chad and Egypt have become corridors of sand and despair. Entire families wander between Port Sudan and the central regions, searching for water, light, a truce that never comes. Each night, Sudan’s border becomes a thin line between life and disappearance.

In this landscape, geopolitics is not theory but flesh. Institutional collapse, regional rivalries, and the fragmentation of power have turned a national crisis into a global epicenter of instability, only a few hundred kilometers from another African wound.

Since early October 2025, Mali’s ruling military junta has entered direct negotiations with the jihadist group Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) after weeks of fuel-import blockades imposed by militants. The de facto embargo—paralyzing convoys from Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire—has doubled fuel prices and crippled an already war-torn country. Neither protection from Africa Corps mercenaries (formerly Wagner Group) nor military escort operations have restored order. Unable to control internal routes, the junta has yielded to jihadist pressure, beginning talks that mark the failure of an armed response and the erosion of state authority.

Yet amid the ruins, gestures of resistance persist: a few thousand families return to villages in Aj Jazirah and Sennar to sow again—as if planting were an act of faith. “Salvation comes only by returning,” Merini said. Perhaps that is true even when one returns to wounded soil.

SYRIA — THE RETURN THAT DOES NOT SAVE

If Sudan is the fresh wound, Syria is the scar that will not heal.

Fourteen years of war have rewritten the geography of the Middle East and erased entire cities: Aleppo, Homs, Idlib, Daraa — names that sound like a litany of ruins. By the end of 2024, 7.4 million Syrians were still internally displaced and over 6 million had taken refuge in neighboring countries. Some attempt to return, but homecoming rarely brings salvation — only survival amid absence. To return to a destroyed house, to a city strewn with mines, is to reopen a wound that never closes.

Syria remains a delicate crossroads of international politics, where strategies, alliances, and spheres of influence transcend borders. Turkey, Iran, Russia, the United States, Israel, and other regional powers have all acted according to their own security logics. But while governments seek balance, ordinary people endure.

Countries that have hosted millions of refugees for years — Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey — face mounting strain: dwindling resources, rising social tensions, and a fraying commitment to hospitality. Syria, once a cradle of civilization and diversity, is now a mosaic of mutilated returns.

And in that void of home and memory, the phrase returns like a whisper: “You never really escape from places.”

But what becomes of a place that no longer exists?

UKRAINE — THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDS

In the heart of Europe, the war in Ukraine continues to reshape the continent’s political map. Since 2022, nearly 7 million Ukrainians have sought refuge across Europe, while 3.7 million remain displaced within their own country. Cities change under bombardment, civilian infrastructure collapses, and every winter brings the dread of new blackouts, new exodus.

Yet Ukraine has displayed a remarkable strength of identity — a capacity to maintain belonging even amid devastation. Europe, for its part, has responded swiftly: offering asylum, temporary protection, and integration pathways that demonstrate tangible solidarity. But moral fatigue grows, and the long duration of war weighs heavily on host societies.

In Ukraine, staying is an act of courage; fleeing, an act of survival. No one truly knows where the line between the two lies — perhaps it doesn’t exist.

Perhaps it is a circle that closes within each individual: you can change city, language, life — but that war follows you, an echo that never fades.

A GEOGRAPHY OF PAIN AND RESILIENCE

Sudan, Syria, Ukraine.

Three lands, three wars, three ways of expressing the same truth: flight does not free — it suspends. Latitudes change, flags change, but the fate of the displaced remains the same. War uproots, politics tires, the world watches.

And while wars consume entire regions, elsewhere another kind of anger rises — that of those who do not flee but demand the right to stay.

Since late September 2025, Morocco has been swept by an unprecedented wave of youth protests. Generation Z occupies the squares of Rabat, Casablanca, and Marrakech, demanding radical reform in education and healthcare. A spontaneous movement, yet part of a transnational current uniting young people across Africa, Asia, and Latin America — from Nepal to Peru — in a new geography of dissent.

Here, flight gives way to resistance. In Sudan, people flee the collapse of a state.

In Syria, they flee a past that refuses to die.

In Ukraine, a future that never arrives.

In Morocco, they stay — but to change.

And everywhere, the same question echoes: “Who are you really running from?”

Humanity as a whole seems perpetually in motion — yet even those who stay are often fleeing: from themselves, from fear, from indifference. We live in a permanent diaspora — that of consciousness.

“Salvation comes only by returning,” Merini wrote. Not backward, but inward.

And perhaps that is the greatest geopolitical truth of our time: peace is not won by going far away, but by ceasing to lie to oneself.

Because, in the end, no one escapes from anyone.

We learn, slowly, to stay.