The Refugee Project

The Refugee Project is a documentary project bydocumentary photographer Bikem Ekberzade.

History

Ekberzade started the documentary project in the midts of the Kosovo crisis. Her aim was to try to shed light to the humanitarian crisis in the Balkan triangle of Albania-Kosovo-Macedonia.

Making the documentary

She travelled to Northern Albania first in 1998 to document the lives of Kosovar Albanians seeking shelter in the region. With the support of national and international staff from UNHCR and a German NGO called HCC (Humanitarian Cargo Carriers) in Albania and the IFRC/ICRC in Macedonia she was able to move around and visit the refugee families in their places of refuge. She continued her work for almost 2 years, until fighting ceased in Kosovo and the border opened leading to a rapid return and resettlement.

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan was next for the project. The status quo in the region had left the IDPs (Internally Displaced People) stranded in the refugee camps for over 20 years. Living in mud shacks in refugee camps, mostly away from the large cities, these uprooted people were trying to survive where no hope flourished for their repatriation. Although their territory was occupied by another country, they were nowhere in the news, no one was coming to their rescue, and the only occasional mention of them were as "burdens" in a struggling country's economy, unwanted, forgotten.

Afghan refugees

Later addition to the project was the Afghan refugees in Pakistan and the Internally Displaced in the Penshir valley of central Afghanistan. Ekberzade's documenting of their lives continues.

University of Manitoba installation

In December of 2004 the documentary photographer along with 11 architects set up an installation at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg to raise awareness on refugee protection. In September 2005 Refugees was screened in full for the first time in Turkey and overseas. A short film which Ekberzade made with Neslihan Karaduman by editing still images from The Refugee Project had found its final form with the crisis which Ekberzade had photographed during the early summer months of 2005 along the Chadian border. Refugees from Darfur were trying to take refuge in simple camps in the Sahara.

The simple intention to highlight a humanitarian crisis now has turned into an expansive project seeking to document and expose the seriously overlooked nature of the global refugee crisis and forced migration. Ekberzade is still seeking to concentrate on populations running from persecution in their country of origin and seeking shelter in different parts of the globe. The project is based on the people themselves and mainly structured around their stories.

Book

The final component of The Refugee Project is a book published in Turkey titled Yasadisi (Illegal) The book concentrates on the lives of two illegal refugee women, single mothers in their early twenties from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Photographs

The photographs from The Refugee Project have been published in various publications. Their most notable appearance however have been in:

  • Life After Kosovo: Refugees in Northern Albania

A UNHCR sponsored exhibit in Istanbul, Turkey (Feb. '99)

  • Kosovo's Children

Doubletake Magazine, Issue 17

  • Joint Exhibit on Politics and Conflict

House of Docs, 2002 Sundance Film Festival

  • The Refugee Project

Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha, Qatar 2002

  • The Refugee Project

Network of Oxford Women for Justice and Peace (NOW) The Museum of Oxford, U.K. 1-14 March 2003

  • The Refugee Project Exhibiting Exile

Center Space, University of Manitoba, Canada, December 2004

  • Refugees, The Film

Screenings have been in Istanbul/Turkey, Lucania/Italy, and Winnipeg/Canada

Plan B Publishing, ISBN 975-8723-14-6, January 2006