Guardian looks at refugees

 

Another sad story chronicling the plight of Syria's refugees, read it here. 

Independent World cover

To save you squinting at Loveday's wonderful words the online edition is here.

Refugees face cold winter

Some 400,000+ people have fled the conflict in Syria, which has now been dragging on for nearly two years. Many of those that left with nothing but what they could carry live in extremely basic conditions – tents made of scavenged billboard hoardings, old schools, farm outhouses and part-constructed buildings. Now they face the prospect of a harsh winter with little protection from the cold. These images are all from a three day trip in the north of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley with Save The Children in order to tug some heart/purse strings before the worst of the season sets in.

Syrian refugees flood to Lebanon

They may be buggers to find, but apparently there's some 90,000 Syrians thought to be in Lebanon taking refuge from the fighting across the border. The conditions in which they live differ greatly, but at the muddy end of the stick are a group who fled the embattled Babr Amr district in Homs and set up camp on a farm in the Bekaa valley near Chatura. As I said, finding these refugees can be tricky, and getting them to allow you to take pictures of them is neigh on impossible, due to fears of retribution for family members still left inside. However, a commission last week from Caritas – one of the many NGOs working diligently to offer what help they can – was a golden ticket into a story I've been bashing my head against repeatedly over the last year.

A walk around Beddawi

In the Beddawi refugee camp, just a few kilometers north of Tripoli, 20-something-thousand Palestinian exiles live within an area of around a single square kilometer. As far as Lebanon's camps go, this one is pretty relaxed, a far cry from the likes of Ain el Helweh. Conditions are hard, but easing; more and more of the 15,000 refugees from neighbouring the Nahr el Bared camp – whose presence doubled the population of Beddawi after the army razed their camp in 2007 – are now returning home. Population figures aside, the camp still suffers from the endemic maladies of Lebanon's Palestinian population; poor services, poor education and poor prospects for anything better anytime soon.

Reasons to be cheerful

Refugees from the Lebanese community in Abidjan, the recently embattled Côte d'Ivoire city, arrived back in Beirut last Thursday.  The Lebanese have been in Côte d'Ivoire since the late 1800s and I can only imagine how hard it must be to leave your entire life behind you; there were some truly moving moments as families were reunited. Still, worried for their loved ones or not,  the guys waiting soon reverted to type as a MEA hostess (above) made her way out of the arrivals hall.

In the Guardian...sort of

Above is the picture that didn't get printed by the Guardian along with a story about labour rights of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, which my good friend and esteemed colleague Mr Richard Ian 'Art' Hall had published in last week's Guardian Weekly. The kid on the right is seven-year-old Hasan Hameid, who wants to, but sadly probabaly will never get the chance to, be a doctor.

A publication from back home is a something of a holy grail for us, so congratulations are in order. Anyway, they said they didn't have the budget for my photo and ran a subscription wire picture instead.

However, every cloud has a silver lining and freelancer Ahmed Moor, who worked with Rich on his Guardian story wrote a piece for the Guardian website's 'Comment is Free' section. He needed a mug shot and happened to be filing from our office, so I was more than happy to help him out and, hey presto, got a picture on the Guardian's website. One day it'll be the big one beneath with my name on it. Below is another picture the Guardian didn't like (it chopped his hair off), but it's my favourite of the three frames we took by my office window.

The new Palestinian labour law also came up at Executive this month, below is my favourite shot from a series I took for our story.