Somali woman Muraya was 27 and pregnant with her first child when she fled over the border into Kenya following the bloody overthrow of the military dictator Siad Barre.
Nineteen years later and a mother of nine, she still lives in the stiflingly overcrowded Dadaab refugee camp along with 300,000 others who have fled 20 years of war in their native Somalia.
Situated just 80 kilometres from the Somali border in Kenya, Dadaab is the biggest refugee camp in the world. Built for 90,000, it is chronically underfunded, hasn't enough clean water or medical facilities, and 80 per cent of its residents are women and children who rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
While the refugees want to be resettled, there are far too few places on offer and most applications are rejected. It's unlikely Muraya and her husband will ever leave the camp, although they hold out some hope for their children.
Despite that, Muraya remains positive, using time in the camp to work for change, setting up The Women Together Project to provide literacy and numeracy skills to women. She's also helped establish sewing and tie-die cooperatives, all with the aim of giving the women and girls life-changing skills.
It's people like Muraya that inspire Naomi Steer, the former Unions NSW Assistant Secretary and now National Director of Australia for UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.
A long-time fighter for social justice, in the 1980s Naomi was sent by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs to the United Nations in New York to work on refugee and women's issues and then to India where she was responsible for cultural exchanges.
But she felt the need to contribute at home, so came back to Australia to work with the union movement, initially getting a job with Actors Equity, and then the amalgamated Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) before being elected as an Assistant Secretary with Unions NSW.
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