Where were you on September 11, 2001?

I was on vacation in Los Angeles, returning a rental car before catching a flight to Sydney. By the time we reached the airport, everything was closed, the area was chaotic, and nobody seemed to know what would happen next. We finally flew to Sydney three days later.

At the time, the United States was not yet home for me. I was living in São Paulo. But 9/11 felt incredibly close. I had already been to New York many times, and it was perhaps the first time in my life that something resembling war felt that close.

The human cost remains difficult to comprehend: 2,977 people from more than 90 countries were killed that day. The New York City Comptroller later estimated the economic losses to the city alone at between $82.8 billion and $94.8 billion.

And the cost did not end there. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that the United States has spent or committed approximately $8 trillion on the post-9/11 wars and their consequences. Those conflicts have also displaced more than 38 million people.

Twenty-five years later, the world is still losing lives and spending enormous resources on wars. It makes me wonder what even a fraction of that investment could do if directed toward education, health, opportunity, human security and better living conditions for people in vulnerable situations. Perhaps that is also part of addressing the forces that push millions of people to flee their homes.

For those of us who lived through September 11, it is more than a date in history. We remember where we were, who was with us, and how it felt when the world suddenly changed. Twenty-five years later, remembering should also challenge us to ask what kind of world we want to build next.

#September11 #911 #NeverForget #HumanSecurity