To survive, humans need perhaps just five essentials; food, shelter, air, water … and hope.

I was recently involved in the filming of a TV show that took us to the infamous refugee camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos in Greece. And it was there, among the suffocating overcrowding, the sodden ground, the piles of rubbish, the flimsy tents, the lack of sanitation, the weak and the ill that I saw what hopelessness looks like.

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I’ve seen camps before. With various humanitarian organisations I’ve witnessed profound poverty, disease and loss. I’ve visited survivors of acid attacks in Bangladesh. I went to Aceh after the Tsunami and Zambia during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I would never assume to know what it would be like to live under such circumstances, or to live in a refugee camp, but I do know that I would more than likely lose my sanity in Moria.

This wouldn’t be because of the prevalence of snakes and scorpions, the relentless noise, the smells, the cold, the heat, the ever present danger of physical and sexual assault, the toilet shared with one hundred others or even the loss of identity. As the nations of Europe struggle with the current tidal wave of displaced reaching their shores, processing times protract from months to years, and resources, patience and endurance run low, I think that I would sink into a mental mire as I struggled with the lack of hope.

In Moria I met many who had lost hope; those who fought so hard to flee suffering and pursue a future, now found that their dream was a nightmare.

It was in Moria too that I met a leading humanitarian worker who had also completely lost hope. A trained toxicologist this man had previously worked in central Africa helping to solve issues with plagues, cholera and Ebola. But he said that Moria was the worst place he had ever been, “because there is no hope of change.”

Not everyone needs to be in a refugee camp to imagine how they would cope in one. Some people are empaths, some have learnt compassion from their own life experiences, but others seem either incapable or undesirous of solicitude, even championing their self proclaimed “realistic” hearts as though somehow superior.

When I was young I remember assuming that old people were born like that. I think some humans see displaced people in the same way. They see difference in race, language, customs and culture and imagine our hearts and minds must be different too. But the truth is that before the labels “refugee”, “asylum seeker” or “displaced” were thrust upon these people they identified as accountants, farmers, doctors, cleaners, musicians, artists, sons, daughters, grandmas, teachers. Just like you and me.

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In Australia it’s wonderful to see organisations raising awareness by encouraging supporters to sleep rough for a night, or live on refugee camp rations, but those experiences will pass and participants will hopefully return to their usual warmth and nourishment; a home that exists, a family that is alive, a job in a city that hasn’t been bombed, a future of fulfilled potential. And for those in places like Moria?

The number of displaced people in the world has risen dramatically. Some assume this is a blip that will pass, some regard it as the new normal, and others see it as the beginning of a whole new chapter of global politics, economics, climate change and conflict in which we will all find ourselves at some time displaced and in need of the compassion of strangers. No matter what your interpretation, this problem is on our Earth and in our time and is therefore ours to solve. Let’s hope we do.

• Gretel Killeen is a writer and performer