TOKYO-2016

Childhood on hold: refugee kids in the borderland

  • Photographer
    Laia Ros

During 2015, 1.015.078 refugees and migrants reached Europe through the Mediterranean by unseaworthy boats, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This means 799.000 more refugees than the ones that got to the continent in 2014. Worldwide, over 60 million people were forcibly displaced in 2015, the highest level of worldwide displacement ever recorded according to the United Nations programme. Last May, I was in the improvised refugee camp located in Idomeni, a very small Greek village by the Greco-Macedonian border. At its peak, up to 14.000 refugees were bottlenecked there after Macedonia closed the border in order to block the route that most of them used to reach central Europe, where they asked for asylum. Idomeni camp was evicted at the end of May by Greek authorities, and the refugees were placed in official shelters controlled by the Greek Government. So far this year, UNHCR calculates that over 300,000 refugees have made their way into Europe, and almost the 30% of them are children. In the camp, children jumped in the rain, they cheerfully chased volunteers and they collected flowers to give away with a big smile. But despite their laughs, which made one wonder if they actually understood what they were going through, sometimes, between their games, they looked at the sky with a blank stare, their faces frozen.