Over 60,000 migrants are stuck in Greece. Fleeing war, recovering from torture, and seeking refuge – pregnant women, children and parents wait (and wait) for their asylum applications to be processed. But patience is growing thin. Many migrants were doctors, lawyers and engineers in their country. However, they are not allowed to move out of the camp until their asylum claim has been accepted, which can take years.

Many families sleeping on the floor of a destitute school on the border with Albania are Kurds. Inhabiting a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia, Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never been granted independence. Famed for their tough resilience, Kurdish militia groups continue to fight ISIS with the hope of recognition, and their own nation state. Instead, many are now displaced in Europe. This Kurdish boy is from Iraq, and restlessly waits for news of his mother and sister. They also fled Iraq, but went missing in the Turkish Maritsa river, and he doesn’t know if they made the journey….

Whilst many have escaped war, and found safety, too many families face a new kind of danger: anxiety, confusion, depression and devastation. Last year, a migrant from this camp in Greece waiting for his asylum to be processed, killed himself. The Guardian also reported that at least three teenage refugees who arrived in Britain from camps have killed themselves in the past six months.

Musham was selling potatoes, when a Russian airstrike bombed the market where he worked. 57 people died, and 75 were wounded, including many of his friends in what he calls a “massacre.” He lost his leg. “My wife ran out of the house barefoot with our two babies to find me,” he recalls.

Rania’s husband was tortured in Syria. Accused of being a rebel, Assad’s government hung him for three hour each day, for six months in a 1 x1 metre cell with two other people. His shoulders have cracked, and he can’t carry his own child. “We had to sleep standing up, because there was no space. When you enter interrogation, you are totally naked, they told me I was part of a terrorist group. I didn’t do anything! People are dying and screaming in front of you. They hit you with electricity cables. The most difficult part is the hanging. You are blindfolded and lose consciousness.” Rania’s husband has found safety in Greece, but remains traumatized. “I just want to move on with my life, and help my wife and son – but we are stranded here with nothing.”

Greece houses migrants in abandoned fields, rural towns and even a disused music school – many migrants believe it is because the government wants to silence and hide them. In one container, 21 people share one tiny room. The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates nearly one in 100 people worldwide have been pushed out of their countries due to war or political instability. Many countries are unprepared for hosting and integrating refugees into society.

His son plays with his prosthetic leg. The prosthetic is painful to wear: “It hurts my leg. I can’t walk properly, because the plastic is breaking. It is scarring the remaining part of my leg.” When it rains, his plastic leg fills with water.

Musham’s son is four years old, and hasn’t spoken for over six months. He refuses to talk, or eat. His father mimics a plane exploding: “He is scared, of the bombs.” They fled Aleppo, a key battleground of the civil war. Many neighbourhoods have been completed destroyed. Most of the city lies in rubble.

Rania herself was shot in the knee as the fighting intensified. She shows a picture when she was at hospital. “I was pregnant, but I lost the baby because of the bombing and the shock.” Rania was a professional photographer in Syria, taking photos of weddings and parties before the war began. Now there are no parties. Her family have been living in tents and containers for almost four years. “I don’t even have money to get my knee properly treated so I can walk normally.”

Thousands of migrant children are not in school - an entire generation, listless and lost. Mona’s family fled ISIS in Iraq. She has never been to school. “I was given a school bag, but we have no teachers,” she says quietly. There is no policy or focus allowing for children to continue their education and Greek schools are underfunded, and can’t accommodate language barriers and children who have psychological difficulties due to war.

Over 60,000 migrants are stuck in Greece. Fleeing war, recovering from torture, and seeking refuge – pregnant women, children and parents wait (and wait) for their asylum applications to be processed. But patience is growing thin. Many migrants were doctors, lawyers and engineers in their country. However, they are not allowed to move out of the camp until their asylum claim has been accepted, which can take years.

Whilst Europe obsesses over economic migrants and politics, thousands of children and families seeking genuine refugee are left abandoned on our shores. Leaving bloodshed, arriving to abandonment.

Many large NGOs have left Greece, leaving volunteer-run organisations like Refugee Support to supply essentials. Yet funds are dwindling, and as more migrants arrive – like Kazia from Iraq pictured - without housing or food. “We do what we can", says Refugee Support Founder Paul Hutchings. “But Europe is failing in its moral obligation to give people the opportunity to rebuild their futures. That's not going to happen while they are stuck in refugee camps.”

The Gaza Strip is a densely populated and impoverished region inhabited primarily by Palestinian refugees; the majority live in large, overcrowded refugee camps.

Gaza Strip has been under a tight Israeli blockade for more than 11 years now. 2 million Palestinians in the coastal sliver are living in an open air jail. 

The Israeli occupation and blockade have a lot of effects on the economic and socioeconomic conditions in Gaza. 

This collection will gather different footage about Gaza Strip, the sea, people, markets, and neighborhoods. 

Nearly 50,000 people have illegally entered in Greece, mostly migrants from Afghanistan and Syria. Afghans, with help from the local Afghan community, have taken shelter in an unofficial camp in the Pedion Areos park in Athens, as Greek authorities have failed to formulate a coherent policy on how to handle this massive wave of illegal immigration. Non-governmental charities and civilians try to help, providing food and clothing. In other hand, most Syrian migrants arriving in Athens spend their times in hostels until they find the way to leave. Most of them risked their lives crossing the sea from Turkey in dangerous, overcrowded boats. This is their first stop on their way to continue north through the Balkans to more affluent European countries such as Germany or Sweden.

March 30, 2015

Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan



Syrian refugees fled their country and arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan looking for assistance and a safe place to settle after the heavy clashes between the YPG and Al-Nusra front that took place in Rojava. The Kawrgosk refugee camp is currently the largest in Iraq but many of the refugees prefer to live on the outskirts of the city of Erbil. Iraq has recorded a total of 19, 844 Syrian refugees in the camps and aid is distributed to them by the UN, NGOs, and local and national bodies.

August 21, 2014
Baharaka IDP camp north Erbil, Iraq

Volunteers at the Barzani Charity Foundation collaborate with the World Food Program (WFP) to offer two meals for over 3,000 refugees. The camp is located near Erbil, the largest city of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq where thousands of desperate Yazidi refugees are trapped by Sunni militant fighters. Volunteers provide staple meals such as rice, beans, and bread to refugees who line up by the thousands waiting to fill their empty pots and containers with food.

Baserma Syrian Refugee camp,Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan: One of clowns Bring students from school to place of performance.
Three Clowns comes from CMSF From belgium they doing somethings funny in two days (15 & 16 April 2014) in this camp, around fine hundred kids look at their show in each performance.

Hundreds of families are coming across the border daily to flee the shelling in latest military offensive in Yabrud, Syria. The refugees we spoke to -- who had literally just gotten off the lorries they had used to travel across the border -- were visibly shell-shocked from their trip, which has gotten increasingly dangerous. Several spoke to us about Syrian regime aircraft actively targeting fleeing refugees. They're settling in makeshift camps on land that is technically Lebanese territory, but is beyond the last Lebanese army checkpoint and is therefore considered no-man's land. Their situation is devastating - most have no running water, over three families are living in each tent, there are no bathrooms or steady food supplies, and aid organizations are rarely making their way out into this area. The refugees are too afraid to move past Arsal because of the Hezbollah-controlled areas in the Bekaa, and others are even too scared to enter Arsal itself. So they're stuck, with shelling on one side of the border and an unfriendly Lebanese government on the other.

Christmas rituals on the 25th of December at the Anglican Church at C zone of Maela refugee camp.

Altar boy puts in place the wine for the Mass on Christmas Day at the Anglican Church of C zone at Maela refugees camp.

Night falls at Maela camp at Christmas Eve. A few generators supply energy to the bamboo huts.

Distributions of presents at the Baptist Church during the Christmas eve celebrations at Maela refugee camp.

Saw Taw Kaw Si So Gay with his presents on Christmas eve at the Baptist Church of C zone at Maela refugee camp.

View of C zone at Maela refugee camp where the majority of Christian Karen Burmese minority lives.

A young girl is accompanied by her mother in Bab al Salam refugee camp, Azaz. With 35% of Syria's population under the age of 14, what happens to them now will determine Syria's future.

A Syrian refugee girl in the labyrinth of tents which make up Azaz refugee camp. With 35% of Syria's population under the age of 14, what happens to them now will determine Syria's future.

These ladies, gathered in a room enlightened by one and only window, tell the story of the exodus, as they look at some pictures of their city. A lot of them refuse to be seen, for fear of retaliation by the Misratis.

Photos of Syrian refugees in Jordan

The entrance to Borj el-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp outside of Beirut, Lebanon.

The sign at the entrance to Borj el-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp outside of Beirut, Lebanon.

Palestinians living in Burj al Barajneh, a refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, organized a protest against the Israeli military attacks on Gaza during the winter of 2008-2009. The demonstration turned into a hopeless, silent march, with the company of only a few television cameras and their voices were barely heard.