Tag refugees
My name is George, but everybody calls me Ginger George! I was born in Syria and my background is Armenian, but in both communities ginger hair is extremely rare. Even in my entire family, there is no one who has ginger hair and sometimes I ask my mum, ‘Are you sure nothing naughty happened?’ But
In Iran, I had a job as a researcher in Aquatic Animal Health. But opportunities to grow and develop a profile in national and international levels for a female scientist were very limited, so it was always in the back of my mind to leave. Still, when I told my colleagues I was leaving for
I am from the Sayed denomination in the Hazara group in Afghanistan – a minority within a minority. We are actually one of the most persecuted minority groups in the world. In our tribe, my family were very well respected, and that was both our strength and our weakness, as unfortunately my parents were even
The war came to Damascus when I was 14 years old. At first, it didn’t really affect our lives too much, but after a couple of years, it became very dangerous and scary. A lot of students lost their hands or feet in bomb attacks on our school, and some of them died. Sometimes my
My father died 7 years ago. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan, when a woman loses her husband, she has no rights. And as they are not allowed to be educated, they cannot take care of their children by themselves. Instead the brother of the husband will automatically take over in taking care of her and her family.
The first time we tried to leave Iran was not a success. We paid people smugglers to take us to Turkey. They divided us into two groups and said they would be moving us three days apart. In the first group was my mum, 3 sisters, my uncle and a friend. In the second group
I was only 6 months old when my dad got killed in the war, so I don’t have any memories of him. Mum was always the only person providing for us. She worked in the daytime as a midwife, and at night in the emergency department helping people who had been hurt by the bombs.
I left Bhutan in 1991 due to the ethnic cleansing targeting Nepalese speaking people at that time as part of the government’s One People, One Nation, One Language campaign. Suddenly, marriages between our cultural group were discouraged and we were forced to marry interculturally. They also tried to force us to speak a different language,
My family is originally from Afghanistan, but when the Taliban took over, they started the genocide of the Hazara people there. Unfortunately, we are very easy to identify because we have distinctive facial features so it wasn’t safe for us to live there anymore. As a result, just before I was born, my family fled
I have a lot of precious memories from Syria, especially from my first year at university, which was wonderful and eye opening. I was following my passion in Environmental Science in Damascus, and my life was going well. But that year, the war broke out. At first, my family was anxious, but we were still