Monique Sokhan can still clearly remember huddling in the stairwell of her building at night in Phnom Penh with neighbours. As a young girl she was terrified by the glare of the lights that preceded shelling and the sound of the explosions.
She was six at the time and thanks to her parents' quick thinking, escaped relatively unscathed before the Khmer Rouge wreaked havoc in Cambodia.
Her father, a philosophy professor and a strong patriot, was reluctant to leave Cambodia. But the day her sister's school narrowly missed being shelled, her mother's determination to try to leave the country was steeled.
Their decision to flee was made amid the upheaval of the Khmer Rouge's rise to power in the mid-1970s. The execution, forced labour and starvation wrought on the country saw an estimated 1.7 million deaths, according to some estimates.
Ms Sokhan recalled how during the turmoil she was told she was going to France with her father on holiday and the pair quickly fled.
Thus began the journey of this refugee. Ms Sokhan, now head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Hong Kong, reluctantly told her story to mark World Refugee Day today. The theme this year is hope, and that the world's millions of refugees must never give up.
Perplexed by why her mother and sister could not join her when she left Cambodia, young Monique found herself waiting alone in a hotel room for weeks while her father wandered the streets of Paris seeking refugee status, a job and a way to bring the rest of the family to Paris.