This Mother’s Day, please dedicate a moment of gratitude, a sunny lunch and flowers to your mother, said Aditus Foundation director Neil Falzon.

“But when you see a refugee mother, with or without her own beloved children, please also be kind to her and wish her a happy Mother’s Day,” he continued.

“We may not understand everything our own mothers have fought to have us grow strong and capable; please know that we can only imagine what a refugee mother has fought.”

Know that we can only imagine what a refugee mother has fought

With the unprecedented numbers of refugees arriving in Eu-rope in the past year or so come unprecedented numbers of mothers. Of 644,000 refugees in 2015 alone, 34 per cent were women and children. That means 218,960 mother-child bonds in peril.

So many of us have been lucky enough to live in a country where our mothers are able to keep us safe in the simplest of ways, Dr Falzon said.

“Our formative challenges are confined to other children’s meanness in the playground, navigating all the learning there is before us or the everyday cuts and scrapes of our play.”

Refugee women in Malta see all those challenges while having emerged from situations of terror.

Though this is hard for us, with our great fortune, to imagine, please try to imagine it this Mother’s Day, he urged.