My story with Safa began in 2014 in Za’atari refugee camp. I had been working there since it opened in 2012. In those days, thousands of refugees arrived daily, often in desperate conditions as they fled on foot across the border. When I met Safa, she was six years old, learning in a UNICEF-supported school set up in a tent. She had… Read more →←
Topic: Children in emergencies
“Poverty is when you don’t have any money. Because of a lack of money, children don’t have a chance to develop. They may not have a good profession or a good foundation for life.” This is how Marieta and Gor from Armenia recently described the impact of poverty. Whether it’s the instant loss of income that so many parents face… Read more →←
The COVID-19 virus has challenged developed nations in ways that few could have predicted just a few weeks ago. In Iraq, my colleagues and I watch with trepidation as Europe and the US struggle to contain the virus. Hospitals are overwhelmed, there’s an acute shortage of testing and protective equipment, and the death toll continues to… Read more →←
I don’t think many of us living and working in Italy really understood what was happening when the Government declared a six-month state of emergency on 31 January. Coronavirus was still new. We started getting phone calls from friends and colleagues from all over the world to check on our health and families. As the number of affected… Read more →←
Three years after Mosul was retaken from the so-called Islamic State, parts of west Mosul still resemble a warzone with entire neighborhoods laid waste. Buildings remain collapsed into each other like a deck of cards. They create a dangerous mashup of bricks and steel that loom over children and families fighting to resume their lives as… Read more →←
Sekou becomes wistful when I ask him about his village. “Before, things were good. At night, we’d sit around the campfire and tell stories with our parents. And during the day, we’d dance and play the drums.” He comes from a tiny village in Mopti, the central region of Mali that has increasingly become the theater of violence and… Read more →←
Over 7,000 new Syrian refugees – nearly half of them children – have fled the conflict in northeastern Syria and arrived into the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many of them are women, children and the elderly. Almost all of them walked long distances through the night, hoping to reach safety. They arrive in physical and mental distress.… Read more →←
The drive alongside lake Lanao is idyllic. Surrounded on one side by the lush greenery of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and on the other by the vast ocean-like expanse that forms the largest lake on the island. But the horror of what took place alongside the lake’s northern shores hits you when you enter the devastated… Read more →←
If I know about a malnourished child, I will go to the family’s house every day to check on the child. If they don’t have food, I will buy it myself and give it to them. I just can’t look away. I’m South Sudanese and these are my people. Recently, I have been working in South Sudan documenting the treatment of three children… Read more →←
Amidst the ear-piercing noise of the helicopter, I could hear 11-year-old Jahmaurae Moreau say that to fly in a helicopter was “pretty cool”. He was smiling but, minutes later, as we were leaving the island behind, a few tears rolled slowly down his cheeks His mother Marianise and his 4-year-old sister Katheleh sat in front of us.… Read more →←