On World Refugee Week join author and refugee advocate Carina Hoang as she reflects on the exodus of more than one million Vietnamese between 1975 and 1996.

At 16 years old, Carina Hoang escaped war-torn Vietnam on a wooden boat with her two younger siblings and 370 other people. Her experience shaped her life and inspired her award-winning book, Boat People: personal stories from the Vietnam Exodus 1975-1996.

Carina was living in a makeshift refugee camp with her younger brother and sister, then aged 12 and 10 respectively. After a perilous boat journey through pirate-infested waters, they had ended up on an uninhabited Indonesian island with hundreds of other refugees.

There was little food or water, and no medical treatment for the malaria that struck down many refugees. Yet Carina’s situation as a young girl, alone, presented additional dangers. At night, she and her siblings slept in a tent with other families where she felt safer.

“Women are very vulnerable in refugee situations,” she says. “Often they’re looking after children, too, and sometimes that can mean making hard decisions in order to protect them.”

Today, Carina lives in Perth with her daughter and has recently finished a PhD that focuses on the experiences of refugees. She is also an Ambassador of Australia for The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Photo courtesy of HKSAR Government.