There are currently almost 2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. This is after the UNHCR and other int'l organisations worked on voluntarily repatriating over 3 million refugees that were in Pakistan back to their home state of Afghanistan. The irony of this was that the UN originally estimated that there were only ever 3 million total Afghan refugees in Pakistan beginning from when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the late 1970s. Somehow nearly 2 million people went unaccounted for. Think for a moment, aide that has arrived over the years - based upon a belief there were 3 million - barely covered the 3 million that were thought to be there; what about aide for 2 million more people? Criticisms lately go that refugee camps in the region are harbouring terrorists, that people are "economic" migrants, that moving out of their home state b/c of drought is not a legitimate reason. While the official "Refugee Convention" definition does not include persons moving due to natural disaster or for reasons of making a livelihood, it is undeniable that suffering is ubiquitous in the region. As humans we may in theory all have "equal human rights" but the reality is that conditions in many areas of the world make it nearly impossible to realise a majority of human rights without help.
even with all of this aid from America, the UN and MANY other countries.......
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.....this still happens.
Check out other photos from this series.
Visual injustice is a funny thing....it makes people FEEL bad, or sad but few are propelled to do anything. Why?
I suppose a more telling question would be if your neighbor was suffering like this would you help?
Or even MORE potent in this world: do you even know your neighbor? Are you so convinced of the infallibility of the individual that it's not worthwhile to make your neighborhood a community? These people in the photos would not be surviving, albeit by a thread, without a community.
Where is your community?
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