This story was originally featured in the UN’s Youth, Peace and Security campaign, Hear Us. Act Now.

"Peace is being able to imagine a future without fear interrupting it."

How do you protect truth when fear is louder than facts? Twenty-three-year-old Lebanese storyteller Joyce Horkos reflects on living through crisis at home, battling misinformation, and why responsible journalism is an act of humanity.

The recent wave of violence in Lebanon has led to the displacement of more than a million people in a population of nearly six million.

Read her powerful take on why choosing to stay—and choosing to connect—is where everyday peace begins.

Here's her peace.

Fear as a daily routine

At night, before I sleep, I check my phone one last time.

Not because I am waiting for a message, but because I need to know everyone I love is still okay.

During the war, this became my routine. I memorized where people lived, who had evacuated, who stayed home, and who had not replied recently. Every few hours, I refreshed the news, afraid I would miss something near or someone I care about.

I live in Koura, in North Lebanon, far from the areas directly affected by the war. But fear does not respect distance. It moves quickly through screens, voices, silence, and uncertainty

Some nights, I could not sleep at all.

Life, on the surface, continued normally. I went to university, submitted assignments, and sat in lectures while my mind was elsewhere. There is something deeply strange about discussing theories in a classroom while mentally calculating whether roads are safe, whether loved ones have electricity, or whether another escalation of violence is coming.

At the same time, the economic crisis in Lebanon made everything heavier. Families around me were already exhausted before the war intensified. My father’s work became unstable. I lost most of my tutoring students. Slowly, conversations with friends shifted from future plans to survival. We stopped asking each other where we wanted to be in five years. We started asking whether things would get worse next week.

For many young people in Lebanon, uncertainty became the only stable thing in our lives.

When staying becomes a choice

For a long time, I thought leaving Lebanon was the only way forward. I believed adulthood meant building a life somewhere else, somewhere calmer, more predictable. But over time, something shifted in me. It began with stories.

I study English Literature and Journalism because I have always been drawn to people, the way they live, the way they endure, and the way they continue even when everything feels unstable. I wanted journalism to help people feel seen.

But I also learned that stories can harm as much as they can heal.

Living in the age of misinformation

I saw this happen repeatedly. People shared information out of fear before checking it. Families worried over news that later turned out to be false. Entire conversations were shaped by uncertainty rather than truth.

At one point, I realized how dangerous misinformation becomes in a country already carrying unresolved trauma, political polarization, and economic collapse. Fear spreads quickly when people no longer know what to trust.

That is what led me to join a UN Development Programme -supported training initiative, with funds from the German Government through the KfW Development Bank, in partnership with Dawaer NGO, with other 50 young media students from across Lebanon, focusing on fact-checking, hate speech, as well as climate storytelling, and mobile journalism.

At first, I thought fact-checking simply meant verifying whether something was true or false. I did not realize how much responsibility comes with slowing down information in a place where everything moves quickly.

Learning to question everything

The training changed how I see everything.

We learned how misinformation is created, how it spreads, and how algorithms amplify emotion over accuracy. We practiced tracing sources, verifying images, and questioning narratives that seem convincing at first glance.

But more than tools, I learned a habit of thinking differently. I no longer consume information passively. I pause. I question. I ask who benefits from a certain narrative, who is being excluded, and what happens when fear becomes louder than facts.

The hate speech sessions added another layer. They made me reflect on how language shapes perception, and how quickly stereotypes become accepted when repeated often enough. It made me more aware of the words used in everyday conversations, and how easily they can exclude or divide.

Listening to the past, understanding the present

Then came UNDP-oral history trainings, with funds from the Government of Canada, in partnership with UN Women.

We listened to people who lived through the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). Their stories were not distant history, they were lived memories still present today. Stories of displacement, separation, fear, and silence that had never fully left.

What struck me most was how much had remained unspoken for decades.

I realized that many of the divisions people refer to today were never fully healed. They were passed down quietly through fragmented memories and inherited fears.

But I also realized something important: when people are given space to tell their stories in their own words, something changes. Labels become less rigid. Differences feel less absolute. What remains is shared human experience.

That changed how I understand journalism.

Stories are not just information. They are responsibility.

Telling stories from the ground

Through the same programme, I trained in mobile journalism and climate storytelling. I learned how to film, edit, and produce stories using a phone—how to capture everyday realities that often go unnoticed.

Climate storytelling especially changed my perspective. Before, climate change felt distant. But through reporting, I began seeing how climate issues are connected to daily life in Lebanon—water shortages, changing conditions, and the pressure this places on already fragile communities.

It made me understand that climate is not separate from human stories. It is part of them.

Responsibility in action

All these experiences—fact-checking, hate speech awareness, oral history, mobile journalism, and climate storytelling—started to connect. They all pointed to the same idea: the way we share information shapes how we see each other.

During the current escalation in Lebanon, I also joined emergency fact-checking efforts through Sawab, an independent youth-led fact checking platform. It gave me a way to turn what I learned into something practical, something that could reduce confusion and fear when it spreads the fastest.

But beyond tools and training, what changed most was how I understand responsibility. I started seeing journalism not only as reporting events, but as protecting truth when fear is louder than facts. As documenting people with dignity instead of reducing them to spectacles. As resisting the pressure to simplify complex realities into easy narratives.

In a region where people are often spoken about rather than listened to, responsible storytelling itself becomes an act of humanity.

Redefining peace

Today, peace means something very simple to me.

Peace is being able to imagine a future without fear interrupting it. It is being able to trust what we hear. It is being able to speak without increasing division. It is being able to see others as human first.

Most importantly, peace is coexistence.

I see it in small moments that are easy to miss.

Like the time a young man stopped to check on my mother while she was resting in the car outside my university. He did not know her. He simply cared.

That moment stayed with me because it reminded me that kindness still exists, even when everything feels uncertain.

My generation in Lebanon has grown up through instability and crisis. But even so, young people continue to find ways to support each other, by checking on friends, sharing verified information, telling stories, and trying to make sense of a world that often feels overwhelming.

What I want the world to understand is that young people here are not only living through crisis. We are also trying to protect something human inside it—truth, empathy, and connection.

But we cannot do it alone.

We need opportunities to learn, create, and tell stories responsibly. We need spaces where information can be strengthened instead of distorted. We need support for education, journalism, and youth initiatives that help us build understanding rather than division.

Because despite everything, many of us are still choosing to stay connected to this place.

And maybe that choice itself is where peace begins, as a daily decision to remain human in circumstances that constantly try to harden us.

Joyce Horkos participated in a series of UN Development Programme-supported trainings and initiatives focused on fact-checking, hate speech awareness, oral history, climate storytelling, and mobile journalism.

During the programme, Joyce’s video story later won the Best Climate Change Storytelling Award, highlighting how accurate, human-centered narratives can strengthen resilience rather than fear.

She also contributed to emergency fact-checking efforts through Sawab, an independent youth-led media and fact-checking platform, during the recent escalation of conflict in Lebanon, applying her skills to counter misinformation and promote responsible storytelling.