© Lynsey Addario/VII. Syrian refugees leave a food distribution administered by the World Food Program and UNICEF at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, April 7, 2013. Roughly 100,000 Syrian refugees live in the camp, and more arrive each day through official and unofficial border crossings between Syria and Jordan as the civil war in Syria enters its third year. The United Nations estimates that the number of Syrian refugees is currently over one million.
In honor of World Refugee Day today, Art Works Projects for Human Rights has unveiled their latest initiative, “Sanctuary & Sustenance: the Story of Many Journeys,” a multimedia installation that is being projected in 11 cities around the world. This project is comprised of not only photography but also motion graphics and music; it features the work of photojournalists such as Lynsey Addario, Paula Bronstein and Ron Haviv. “Sanctuary & Sustenance” sets out to draw attention to the plight of the more than 40 million refugees around the world who have fled their homes because of war, persecution or natural disasters.
© Danilo Giannese/JRS. Four thousand people live in Mokoto camp in the eastern Congolese province of North Kivu. Every time rebels attack they flee to the forest, sleeping there overnight without food or water. Consequent violence – theft, extortion and rape – displaced more than 360,000 people in North Kivu last year. Inadequate service provision, corruption and judicial impunity continue to scar this resource-rich nation, particularly in the east.
© Marcus Bleasdale/VII. An early-morning religious service in the Gety displaced camp, just days before the historic 2006 elections.
© J. Tanner /UNHCR. Afghanistan, February 2011. A young girl waits in line with her mother at a UNHCR distribution event at Tamir Mill Bus site. UNHCR distributes charcoal and NFI’s to registered IDP’s at one of Kabul’s Informal Settlement Sites in the city centre. 57 families eek out a living in a dilapidated warehouse building owned by the Ministry of Transportation. The site originally served as a storage facility for the national bus company. Tajik and Pashtun families live side by side without any major conflict. Over 70% of the families are returnees from the period 2002-2004 who are unable to achieve sustainable reintegration in their places of origin and subsequently drifted to Kabul City in search of work. There is a nearby school which is accessible to the children but the poor economic circumstances of the many families oblige them to send their children out to work. low levels of literacy, particularly amongst the women, limit their access to employment other than the lowest paid daily wage labor.
© Gabor Kotschy. Budapest, 2013. An audience gather in Budapest, Hungary to view a public, outdoor screening of the Sanctuary & Sustenance installation, produced by ART WORKS Projects, in celebration of World Refugee Day. “Sanctuary & Sustenance” is a multimedia projection of photography, film, music, and words that gives viewers the opportunity to trace the journey of a family during the catastrophic events of displacement, on a path to sanctuary, and through the long process of rebuilding life in a new community.
