Man suspected of shooting two Minnesota lawmakers arrested after manhunt

The man suspected of killing a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and wounding another and his wife is in custody following a nearly two-day manhunt that followed a shocking streak of political violence.

Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of fatally shooting Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, as well as shooting Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife at their respective homes on Saturday in what has been described as a “politically motivated” attack.

Boelter was armed when he was captured in rural Green Isle, Minnesota late Sunday night. He faces two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder.

“The face of evil,” Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a social media caption alongside a photograph of the suspect surrounded by heavily armed law enforcement officers.

“After relentless and determined police work, the killer is now in custody,” the office said. “Thanks to the dedication of multiple agencies working together along with support from the community, justice is one step closer.”

Boelter appeared to be impersonating a police officer when he arrived at the home of Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife in Champlin shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday, according to a criminal complaint unsealed after his arrest.

He knocked on the door and announced himself as a police officer before entering the house, the complaint says.

The first 911 call came from the Hoffmans’ children, according to the complaint.

Officers were then dispatched to the homes of other lawmakers, including to the home of Rep. Hortman in nearby Brooklyn Park.

When officers arrived at 3:55 a.m., they found a Ford SUV with “police style lights” and “immediately” recognized the suspect, according to the complaint.

Officers then saw him fatally shoot Mark Hortman at the front door of the home.

Police then exchanged gunfire with the suspect as he fled inside.

Melissa Hortman is among the state’s top Democratic officials and the former state Speaker of the House. She and her husband Mark died from “multiple gunshot wounds,” according to law enforcement officials.

Officers discovered “at least three AK-47 assault rifles” and a 9mm handgun “as well as a list of names and addresses of other public officials” in a car at the scene of the shootings.

They also recovered a ballistic vest, another 9mm firearm, a mask, and a gold police-style badge, the complaint says.

State Sen. Hoffman was shot nine times and “is closer every hour to being out of the woods” while recovering in the hospital, his wife Yvette told Senator Amy Klobuchar on Sunday.

Yvette Hoffman was shot eight times, she said.

They are both “incredibly lucky to be alive,” she shared in a message to Klobuchar.

Law enforcement agencies spent nearly 48 hours searching for Boelter, with more than 100 agents deployed across the state for what Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley called the “largest man-hunt in state history.”

On Sunday morning, officials located a vehicle they believed belonged to Boelter on the side of the highway in Sibley County.

Police descended on a wooded area in Green Isle on Sunday night after a Sibley County resident reported that their trail camera captured an image that “was consistent with Boelter” around 7 p.m., according to The Star Tribune.

Boelter then “crawled” to law enforcement teams who converged on the area, Minnesota State Patrol Lt. Colonel Jeremy Geiger said during a press conference Sunday night.

“There was no use of force by any member of law enforcement that was out there, and the suspect was taken into custody without any use of force,” he added.

While a motive has not yet been released, law enforcement officials said they discovered what appeared to be list of other Democratic lawmakers, officials and members of organizations that have advocated for abortion rights.

A longtime friend and roommate of Boelter told reporters that he held extremely anti-abortion views and had recently been experiencing some financial issues.

In remarks following the arrest, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz condemned political violence and urged Americans to “recommit to the core values of our country.”

“This cannot be the norm,” he said. “It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences … It’s not about hatred. It’s not about mean tweets. It’s not about demeaning someone. It’s leading with grace and compassion and vision and compromise and decency. That was taken from us in Minnesota.”

Minnesota public safety commissioner Bob Jacobson said the suspect “exploited the trust our uniforms are meant to represent.”

In a statement, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth said she is “grateful that this nightmare has come to an end with the suspected murderer captured alive so he can be charged, prosecuted, and punished for the horror he has wrought on our state.”

State Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy expressed her “profound gratitude” for law enforcement officers for protecting lawmakers while Boelter remained at large.

Labour ‘owe an apology’ for delay in grooming gangs inquiry, ex-human rights boss says

Labour ministers “owe an apology” to everyone they dismissed over grooming gangs after Sir Keir Starmer’s U-turn on a national inquiry, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said.

The prime minister bowed to months of mounting pressure over the issue ahead of the publication of a new report by Louise Casey, who led the original review into the scandal, on Monday.

Sir Keir and a number of Labour ministers, including Jess Phillips, the minister for domestic abuse, have faced criticism for previously refusing to order such an probe.

The Labour leader initially pointed to previous work on the issue by Professor Alexis Jay, saying the public wanted action not another inquiry.

But after Ms Casey’s report backed the idea, the PM accepted the recommendation.

The issue hit the headlines again in January with a series of tweets by Donald Trump ally Elon Musk.

Sir Trevor Phillips said: “I think that ministers owe an apology to all of the people who they essentially said were talking rubbish, to all the people who to whom they said ‘you haven’t actually bothered to read the Jay Report and you don’t know actually what’s going on’. And to all of the people of whom it was suggested their interest and concern about this was motivated in some way by racial distaste or prejudice.”

Speaking on Times Radio he called specifically for an apology to the late Times reporter Andrew Norfolk “who did more than anyone else to expose this scandal and to keep it in the headlines… and who went to his grave feeling that people who should know better regarded him as a racist and a bigot.”

He added: “One minister said to me yesterday, it shouldn’t be about the hurt feelings of journalists and so on. Well let’s be clear about this. People like Andrew Norfolk were speaking on behalf of those who could not speak. This isn’t a matter of vanity. It isn’t a matter of journalists saying look at me. It is a matter of people like Norfolk, and there were others, who spoke out because the people who were the victims were not being heard and could not speak for themselves and I think they are owed an apology.”

In April, Sir Trevor condemned the government’s approach to grooming gangs as “utterly shameful”.

The inquiry is expected to examine whether fears over accusations of racism contributed to the failure to protect hundreds of girls from sexual abuse by grooming gangs.

It will be formally announced in the Commons by the home secretary Yvette Cooper, at the same time as the near 200-page Casey report, which reports suggest will warn that white British girls who were targeted were “institutionally ignored for fear of racism”.

Ministers are expected to hit out at the previouis Tory government and warn that a failure to act on previous findings has led to a lost decade for justice.

The new inquiry will have the power to compel witnesses, will oversee the small number of local investigations ministers announced earlier this year and have the power to start new ones, even over the heads of resistant councils.

A new National Crime Agency-led police operation is also expected to reopen more than 800 grooming gang cases.

The shadow home secretary Chris Philp defended the Conservatives’ record on the issue, saying Theresa May had set up original Rotherham inquiry.

He told GB News: “It was Rishi Sunak, a Conservative prime minister, who set up the grooming gangs task force, which in its first year led to 550 arrests. So that’s what the last government did.”

He also called for a “quick” inquiry. “Some public inquiries drag on for five or ten years. We can’t have that happening here. This needs to be a one- or two-year process, a very focused process,” he said.

At the start of the year Mr Musk even called on the King to step in and dissolve parliament after Labour rejected a call for a national inquiry.

The tech billionaire’s erratic request followed days of an explosive row over the PM’s handling of historic child abuse in Oldham after he suggested the Labour leader had failed to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions.

While the monarch does have the power to dissolve parliament, this power is a formality and is done so upon request of the prime minister.

Sir Keir condemned Mr Musk at the time suggesting his “lies and misinformation” on grooming gangs were amplifying the “poison” of the far right.

Mr Musk has engaged in a long-running war of words with Sir Keir’s administration which came to a head during last summer’s far-right riots when the social media boss claimed “civil war is inevitable” in the UK.

Downing Street denied that it had been prompted into action by Mr Musk.

A No 10 spokesman said the probe would be a “full statutory inquiry. What this inquiry will do is build on the work carried out by Alexis Jay and her independent inquiry to child sexual abuse, but look specifically at how young girls were failed so badly by different agencies on a local level, strengthening the commitment we made at the start of this year to carry out locally-led inquiries.

“By setting up a new inquiry under the inquiries act with statutory powers to compel witnesses, the local authorities and institutions who fail to act to protect young people will not be able to hide and will finally be held to account for their action.”

Tory MP pleads not guilty to sexual assault at London’s Groucho Club

A Tory MP has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault at London’s Groucho Club.

Patrick Spencer, the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, allegedly cupped the breasts of two women over their clothes at the famous private members’ club on an evening in August 2023.

He has been suspended from the Conservative Party and had the whip withdrawn over the charges.

When the charges were made public last month, Mr Spencer “categorically denied” the allegations against him and vowed to defend them “robustly” in court.

Mr Spencer is the son of Michael Spencer, a billionaire Conservative peer and founder of finance firm NEX Group.

Lord Spencer was Tory treasurer between 2006 and 2007, having donated millions of pounds to the party, and was awarded a peerage by Boris Johnson in 2020.

Mr Spencer was first elected to Parliament last year, with a majority of 4,290. Prior to entering Parliament, he worked in finance for a private equity firm chaired by his father, IPGL.

He later took a job at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, founded by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, and then became a senior adviser at the Department for Education.

He made his maiden speech in the Commons in July last year during a debate on the MPs’ code of conduct relating to second jobs, during which he said the “most important thing to the people across my constituency” was “restoring a sense of moral probity and public spiritedness to our political system”.

He had been told by Tory whips to stay away from the parliamentary estate while inquiries were ongoing.

The 37-year-old, from Suffolk, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where he confirmed his name and date of birth before pleading not guilty to the offences.

Prosecutor Polly Dyer told the court that the first complainant “felt Mr Spencer put his arms under her arms” before he “cupped her breasts over the clothing”.

Of the second complainant, the prosecutor alleged “he moved behind her and also cupped her breasts with his hands over clothing”.

Ms Dyer added that neither woman consented to the alleged touching.

He is due to appear at Southwark Crown Court on July 14.

The five big questions that will dominate the G7

World leaders are gathered in Canada for a G7 summit set to be dominated by intense talks about the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

With missiles being fired back and forth between Israel and Iran, Sir Keir Starmer, Donald Trump and others are in Kananaskis, Alberta until Tuesday.

But while the summit has been overshadowed by rising tensions elsewhere, there are still a series of thorny issues for the G7 leaders to discuss.

The Independent looks at the five big questions that will dominate the agenda at the summit.

A focal point of the whole summit will be the relationship between Mr Trump and his host, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney.

The former Bank of England boss won April’s general election riding a wave of anti-Trump sentiment across the country, following the US president’s threats to turn Canada into America’s 51st state.

But, as host, it will fall to Mr Carney to build bridges between Mr Trump and the rest of the G7. They are scheduled for a meeting on Monday morning, with Mr Carney hoping to strike a trade and security deal with Mr Trump and exempt the country from damaging tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars.

Mr Carney has a mammoth task on his hands to keep Mr Trump onside. The last time Canada hosted the G7 in 2018, Mr Trump lashed out at former PM Justin Trudeau and left without signing an agreed joint statement.

Meanwhile Mr Trump’s relations are not just strained with Canada. All of the G7 leaders will want to quiz the US president on his future tariff plans and seek carve outs for their own countries from the damaging levies.

His “Liberation Day” measures are still on hold after the US International Trade court struck them down.

But with the White House plotting ways to reimplement the universal tariffs, leaders at the G7 will be keen to push towards exemptions in the future.

The World Bank has sharply downgraded its global economic outlook over Mr Trump’s use of tariffs – blaming a “substantial rise in trade barriers”.

Mr Trump campaigned on the promise he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine within 24 hours of being re-elected.

Six months on, negotiations over a peace deal between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky have stalled.

G7 leaders will be piling pressure on Mr Trump to back tougher sanctions against Putin and his supporters. Sir Keir especially will be seeking assurances from Mr Trump that he will provide support to his so-called coalition of the willing, a peacekeeping force to be sent to Ukraine in the event of a permanent ceasefire.

But, in a sign of the challenge they face, the US President recently suggested it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” in a sign of his waning interest in ending the three-year conflict.

Going into the summit, Canada wanted to talk about climate change and the environment, having suffered its worst wildfire season on record in 2023.

Officials stressed that it was on the agenda for the summit, with the country hoping to focus world leaders on the growing global forest fire threat.

But top of the agenda will be the unfolding crisis in the Middle East. Tensions between Iran and Israel are high and both sides are threatening escalation, while world leaders around the globe are calling for peace.

Mr Trump said it is”possible” America could get involved in the conflict, which would present a challenge to allies who would then be expected to get involved as well.

The crisis threatens to close the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, which would deal a severe blow to global trade.

Scotland could send 100 truckloads of rubbish a day to England

A landfill ban in Scotland could see up to 100 truckloads of waste being moved to England each day due to a lack of incinerators being available to meet extra demand.

At the end of this year, the Scottish government will enforce a ban on “black bag” waste from being buried in landfill sites, but not enough energy-from-waste sites will be ready by the 31 December deadline.

Zero Waste Scotland have predicted the “capacity gap” to be around 600,000 tonnes, with some councils approaching rubbish handling operators in England.

The ban was originally due to be enforced in 2021 before being delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but environmental consultants of concluded that hundreds of tonnes of rubbish till have nowhere to go despite the delay.

David Balmer, a waste expert from ERS Remediation, told BBC Disclosure: “You’re looking at the equivalent of between 80 and 100 trucks minimum running seven days a week to take this material to a facility in England or abroad.”

The Scottish government are hoping to increase recycling rates and use more energy-from-waste incinerators, with the ban hoping to reduce the amount of rubbish that needs to be incinerated.

Non-recyclable items such as wood, textiles, paper, and food will be banned from landfill, as it breaks down to produce methane is around 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

However, the short-term impact is likely that emissions will increase given that that a large fleet of vehicles will have to transport the waste to sites as far away as Manchester.

Alasdair Meldrum, director of waste management consultants Albion Environmental, also told the BBC: “We’ve probably not got the trucks and vehicles to actually move it.”

He added: “You’ve got the environmental impact of all that transport, it’s nonsensical, but the people who have invested in incinerators are saying ‘we’ve invested all this money because of the ban’.

“So, we’re stuck in a really hard place.”

In Scotland, there are currently eight operational incinerators, with additional ones currently being built. While they are still responsible for greenhouse gases, they are a third less damaging than the release of methane from landfill sites.

The Scottish government said: “Any export of waste should only ever be viewed as a short-term solution.”

It added the “vast majority” of councils had alternative measures in place ahead of the landfill ban coming into force but they will “work closely with local authorities and sector bodies to monitor and review any related issues which may arise as the date of the ban approaches”.

Win a Wilderness Festival luxury package for two

Music fans can win a luxury package for two to this year’s Wilderness Festival, all courtesy of Audi.

Wilderness returns this year to the picturesque nature reserve at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, and will be headlined by rock band Supergrass, Nineties rave duo Orbital, and Brit Award-winning, Grammy-nominated indie-rock duo Wet Leg.

Completing the headliner lineup are Basement Jaxx, who are making their return to live shows for the first time in over a decade, as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking album, Remedy.

The winner will receive a pair of complimentary festival tickets and boutique accommodation in a luxury cabin for two. They will also be treated to an Audi Kitchen experience and, for the ultimate luxury, your own private chauffeur to take you and your guest to the festival and return journey.

Enter the prize draw here.

Wilderness Festival is known for its eclectic music lineup, which this year includes performances from pop singer Lapsley, singer-songwriter Bess Atwell, Scottish musician Jacob Alon and DJ Craig Charles.

At The Sanctuary and Spa, guests will discover an oasis of calm, whether that means taking part in disco yoga or a workshop to explore your sensuality. Highlights include boating, massage treatments, sauna rituals, hot tubs, a wild sauna, Wim Hof method ice baths and wild swimming.

Gourmet food offerings can be found at Ben Quinn’s long table banquet in the woods, a once-in-a-lifetime experience set in the woods and lit by chandeliers. There, Quinn and his team will serve up a feast of flavour cooked right in front of you five courses of carefully curated, responsibly sourced, local and seasonal ingredients.

Elsewhere, attendees can join a number of talks, comedy sets and conversations, from Food Stories with Jay Rayner to a live recording of Jamie Laing’s podcast, Great Company.

Comedian, writer and NHS doctor Matthew Hutchinson will share a sharp and moving look at life on the frontline of British healthcare, while cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith will uncover a bold and fascinating alternative history of female friendship.

The prize draw will open for entries at 3pm (BST) on 7 May 2025 and close at 3pm BST on 17 June 2025. Only one entry per person is permitted for the Prize Draw. Terms and conditions apply.

Norris has lost his mojo – the McLaren star needs a fix to downward spiral

On the McLaren pit wall, situated at the end of the home straight in Montreal, they’d have literally felt the shudders and vibrations. The moment their two drivers and championship contenders collided and the moment the ill-titled “papaya rules” first creaked, in a manner only a crash at 200mph can do.

The post-mortem was actually very prompt and concise. Oscar Piastri, to the relief of the entire team, was unimpacted. He finished fourth, to conclude a damage limitation weekend. Team principal Andrea Stella put the incident simply down to a “miscalculation”. And Lando Norris, in a matter of seconds, took full blame for driving up the back of his teammate, cutting short his race and costing him 10 points in the title fight.

To an extent, Norris should be applauded for how rapidly he took full accountability for a crash he labelled as “stupid”. The Briton was in the wrong, eyeing a non-existent gap down the inside, with a collision unavoidable. He immediately apologised to Piastri in the media pen. The antithesis of Max Verstappen, there was no intra-team feud to see here. All is well.

Except, all is not well. With Norris, in particular. Why? Well, the Bristolian has completely lost his mojo.

If this were an isolated incident, it’d be easier to move on. But the 25-year-old has, with two anomalies, endured a torrid first three months of the season. A season in which he started out as the favourite, armed with the fastest car. And if he can’t find an antidote quickly, a maiden world title looks set to run away from him, both on the track and on the leaderboard.

The mistakes have been plentiful. Errors on his final laps in Q3, the top-10 grid-setting phase of qualifying, have been an all too common occurrence, costing him pole positions in China, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. He inexplicably crashed out in Jeddah, forcing a recovery drive the next day from 10th to fourth.

His form, bar Monaco, did not improve as F1 returned to Europe. The Q3 errors continued in Imola and Barcelona, putting him on the back foot while Piastri enjoyed clean air and dominated out in front. Canada also showed the continuation of a worrying trend.

Norris was quickest in the final practice session and, with Piastri struggling around the unique street circuit, pole seemed well within his grasp. Yet while the Mercedes of George Russell put together a perfect lap, Norris faltered twice: missing the final chicane on his first lap and clipping the wall on his second attempt.

You have to wonder how the finale to his first title voyage last year – up against the unrufflable force of Verstappen – has affected him. The drivers’ championship was well within reach in 2024, as McLaren stormed to the front of the pack. Last year, however, it was a weakness at the start which curtailed his challenge. From eight pole positions last year, Norris failed to lead after the first lap in seven of them.

It’s not rocket science. You cannot win an F1 world championship with such glaringly crushing statistics.

But more distressingly this year is the way in which Norris’s endearing and cheeky persona seems to have departed. The driver a whole fanbase fell in love with, with his genuinely amusing Drive to Survive snippets, has been replaced with a driver whose continual knack of self-deprecating quotes is somewhat excruciating to listen to.

Post-qualifying in Canada, it was “I just made too many mistakes”, while on Sunday it was even more stark.

“When I let them [McLaren] down like this and make a fool of myself like I did today, I have a lot of regret,” he said.

“I’m not proud of myself, I feel bad, so apologies to all of them… I’ve let down the team and that’s going to stay with me for a little while.”

Even in customary press sessions with the media – granted, the drivers do a lot of them – Norris seems increasingly unengaged. A man going through the motions, his eyes often wander to the golf on the screens in the McLaren motorhome. Even with weekly interviewer Rachel Brookes for Sky Sports, Norris can barely raise a smile at the moment. This is not the charming, affable man we all know.

Nico Rosberg, brilliant again on punditry duties for Sky with his knowledge and eye for detail, believes it is time Norris employed a mental coach.

“He [Lando] needs to work on the mental side”, 2016 world champion Rosberg said at the last race in Spain. “We all work hours and hours training our bodies… does he work with a psychologist or not? He definitely should because there’s so much value in that.”

This is not a new area of expertise in professional sports. The likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan, Steven Gerrard and Chris Hoy have worked with well-respected sports psychologist Dr Steve Peters. Even Rosberg himself, amid the heightened tension of his intra-team title battle with Lewis Hamilton in 2016, used a mental coach. Rosberg has even sent a message to Norris on Instagram with the suggestion. No reply was forthcoming.

“I worked with one, just to understand the best possible approach,” Rosberg added. “I did two hours every two days leading up to the season. It was more difficult than the physical training, it was insanely difficult and extremely valuable.”

Rosberg also went into further detail in Montreal regarding Norris’s continuous self-deprecatory manner. “If you say every day ‘I’m not good enough’, at some point you’ll believe it,” he said.

“I would strongly recommend he reduces that [negative comments], not always the negative.”

Of course, none of us know the full detail of what is happening behind closed doors and in between the ears. It should be stated that there have been flashes of Norris’s brilliance behind the wheel this year: those two anomalies coming at the season-opener in Australia and around the streets of Monaco. Two sumptuous pole positions were converted supremely to two victories. The talent and skill are still present.

And it’s also worth mentioning that the situation is not yet disastrous. The gap at the top is only 22 points. If Norris wins the next race in Austria and Piastri is forced to retire, the Brit would be back on top. Plenty can change and swing over the next 14 races and six months, including Norris’s form and temperament.

But at the moment, his downward spiral is alarming. Aussie rival Piastri has received plaudits for his coolness and composure under pressure. Across the garage, Norris is struggling to cope with the strain and stress of ‘his year’. McLaren CEO Zak Brown is the Brit’s biggest backer, and perhaps he can conjure a remedy. Because, right now, a quick fix is required to bring him back into contention.

From Uganda to Ukraine, children pay the price of a failure of empathy

At the Nakivale Refugee Welcome Centre in South West Uganda, conditions are dire. Families sleep on concrete floors in overcrowded, unsanitary spaces. One mother from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who I met last year during a visit with War Child, had fled with her eight children after enduring horrific trauma. Her children, aged from toddler to teen, were totally silent. None were playing. That’s what hits me every time. In war, children are not allowed to be children.

Their right to a childhood, to safety, health, education, and play, had been stripped away. They had none of the agency that comes with adulthood so instead, they waited.

A child-friendly space at the Centre, somewhere clean and safe area where children can play, learn, and be themselves, would have transformed everything for that family. It’s a simple concept with a profound impact: it gives children a voice and a degree of normality and it gives their parents critical time to rest, ask for help and start the process of rebuilding their lives.

The families I met while visiting Uganda made abundantly clear how urgent the need is to protect refugee young people. Through educational programmes, trauma therapy, and the stark realities of camp life, War Child’s projects showed the challenges and resilience of these displaced children, and the teams supporting them. Uganda takes in thousands of refugees every week from countries including the DRC, South Sudan, and Burundi. Many arrive as families, others as unaccompanied minors.

In the face of such overwhelming need, organisations like War Child are working to restore the safety, dignity, education, and play that every child is entitled to. One of the most impactful initiatives I witnessed was Can’t Wait to Learn, a digital learning programme delivered by War Child to national and refugee children around the world. Students engage with tablets tailored to their literacy and numeracy levels. The result? Children were so engrossed in their lessons that they barely noticed when we came in to watch. Teachers report significant improvements in both attendance and performance.

Children are excited to learn. Education is vital, but it is more than just numbers and letters. The communities which are developed in the process of educating refugee children, as well as the creativity nurtured, and the safe environments they provide, are equally essential. As I watched children unwittingly receive trauma therapy while learning adjectives, I got a powerful reminder of how specialist organisations understand the needs of such vulnerable children.

The recovery continued with Team Up, a group programme using movement, music, and play to engage with trauma therapy. Children can release their fear and tension through expression and teamwork. The transformation of one set of twin brothers from silent and disengaged to smiling and letting out the odd shout of joy, was a clear example of recovery being possible. These are not just educational tools and play structures but lifelines.

And yet many children fall through the cracks. On a hillside above the Welcome Centre, I met three orphaned sisters aged 18 and under, who had been left to survive alone. After their tarp shelter was stolen, the eldest was raped. For eight months, they lived exposed on the hilltop. Hearing their story, I felt helpless. How did they slip through the system to such a horrendous end?

I was told that major donors are shifting their focus, and government aid is chasing headlines while the most vulnerable are missed. But when their story reached War Child, action followed. Within a day, the girls received medical care and began the process of being moved to safety and psychosocial support. My horror remained, but the helplessness didn’t.

We can feel devastated – and then we can do something. These stories are heartbreaking – but motivating. They reveal the power of compassionate and effective action.

Yet, while needs are growing, governments are turning their backs. From Uganda to Gaza, Sudan to Ukraine, children continue to suffer displacement and trauma. The international response is increasingly one of restriction. Families fleeing unimaginable violence are being met with razor wire, closed borders, and criminalisation. Refugee children are paying the price of a global failure of empathy. On this World Refugee Day, we must find our action and our compassion. Only the lottery of birth separates the children in our lives from the estimated 115,000 refugee Gazans who have crossed the border to Cairo from Gaza with no legal status, education or psychosocial support.

Every child refugee has the right to safety, education, play, and hope. They are not just numbers in a crisis. They are children: full of potential, laughter and joy. They are waiting to thrive, not just survive. It is their right.