World Refugee Day: 15 Storytelling Photos of Refugees Around the World

June 20, 2012 /Photography News/ Observed on June 20 each year, the World Refugee Day is dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world.

The day was created in 2000 by a special United Nations General Assembly Resolution. June 20 had previously been commemorated as African Refugee Day in a number of African countries.

These photos tell stories of men, women, and children who have fled their country under danger of discrimination, conflict, and aggression, to find safety and shelter elsewhere in the world. 

Refugee in Malta. Photo: Olmo Calvo Rodríguez

A family of the Madi tribe returns home from a refugee camp in Uganda, unable to go back to their family plot, occupied by the Internally Displaced Persons from other parts of southern Sudan.
28/10/2008. Nimule, Sudan. UN Photo/Tim McKulka. www.un.org/av/photo

Bahn refugee camp, 50 km from the Liberia/Ivory Coast border. This camp, set up by UNHCR, has capacity for 15,000 refugees. At the time the picture was taken, it was accomodating about 2,000 - but more people are arriving from Ivory Coast every day, fleeing the fierce fighting and political unrest there. The UK government is providing an urgent emergency aid package to help tens of thousands of people affected by the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Liberia and the Ivory Coast. Photo: Department for International Development/Derek Markwell

Refugees in Malta. Photo: Olmo Calvo Rodríguez

Woman and children in Turkish refugee camp at the end of the first Gulf War. Photo: Brian Kelly

Coping with disasters: Refugees and displaced persons in Southeast Asia. An elderly refugee resting at the Lubhini Transit Centre in Bangkok, Thailand. There are about 2,000 refugees in this camp from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos and they will be going to the United States, Canada, Italy and France. 01/07/1979. Bangkok, Thailand. UN Photo/John Isaac. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/

Rohingya children in the Nayapara refugee camp. The Rohingyas are a persecuted ethnic and religious minority from Myanmar, and the groups in Cox's Bazar fled that persecution in 1991 to live in Bangladesh. Photo: Ruben Flamarique/Austcare

Refugees in Malta. Photo: Olmo Calvo Rodríguez

Refugees in Malta. Photo: Olmo Calvo Rodríguez

Boho refugee camp, Somalia. Photo: Frank Keillor

Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem, Palestine. Photo: Reham Alhelsi

Burmese refugee project. Photo: Saoire O'Brien

Refugee women at the Shamshatoo camp at a frontier province in North-West Pakistan. The camp was a temporary home to some 70,000 Afghan refugees. 12/03/2001. Pakistan. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe. www.un.org/av/photo/

Kosovar refugees fleeing their homeland. [Blace area, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia]
01/03/1999. Blace. UN Photo/R LeMoyne. www.un.org/av/photo/

De-Deur refugee camp. Arine Tusenge from Burundi is among refugees that found themselves out in the open again after several they were evicted from a shelter on the Vaal, South Africa.They had been moved to the shelter after 2008's xenophobia related attacks. They fear re-intergration into society and prefer to stay in the open.01-10-09. Photo: Tawedzerwa Zhou 

See also: Sahrawi: Maghreb's Forgotten Refugees, by Paulo Nunes dos Santos