All they want is to go home and be safe. But that isn’t possible, so they run for their lives — many don’t make it.
Utahns can get a glimpse into the desperate lives of refugees and the difficult circumstances they face each day through a interactive exhibition at Salt Lake City’s Library Plaza called Forced From Home.
The guided tour, complete with three-dimensional virtual reality, is sponsored by Doctor’s Without Borders and is free to the public. The installation runs through Sunday.
Participants will see what its like to grab a few possessions and flee on a moment’s notice, trek long distances under harsh conditions, and scrape out an existence inside refugee camps.
A man in such a camp in Lebanon tells the audience of a three-dimensional screening that he left everything behind when he fled Syria.
“I miss the feeling of safety,” he said. “That’s what I miss the most.”
Doctors Without Borders treat people uprooted by conflict and violence all over the world, said Jason Cone, executive director.
“Forced From Home is an opportunity to bring our patients’ stories to U.S. audiences, to humanize the refugee crisis,” he said, “and to challenge political leaders at all levels of government to dramatically increase aid and protections for refugees and asylum seekers.”
The exhibition was invited to Salt Lake City by Mayor Jackie Biskupski as part of the city’s Welcoming Week.
An unprecedented 65.6 million people are now displaced worldwide, according to the United Nations, many of them are refugees and asylum seekers who are denied protections and freedom of movement.
Participants in the Forced From Home exhibit will learn about “push factors” — the root causes that make people flee their homes: war, ethnic and religious tensions, political strife, economic instability and food insecurity.
They will hear about the dangers encountered by refugees on the move: human trafficking, dehydration, drowning, disease and malnutrition.
“It’s a beautiful thing to witness the way people react to this exhibit,” said Dr. Ahmed Abdalrazag, a former refugee and Doctors Without Borders aid worker. “I want visitors to know that refugees are artists, athletes, dancers, doctors, philosophers — human beings with ambitions and dreams as simple as finding a place to live, absent of danger and fear.”
Many refugees are displaced a number of times, said Heather Baniulis, a Canadian nurse who is among the tour guides and spent time with Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan.
If and when they do make it to a refugee camp, the challenges remain to find food, water, sanitation and health care. The future is uncertain.
“That is the reality for a lot of people,” she said. “Camps are not created for these huge influxes of people. They arrive starving and needed resources that aren’t always there.”
And in many cases, she said, people are born and die in refugee camps — knowing little of their ancestral homes or the outside world.
The Forced From Home exhibit made an impression on Brittney Okada Tuesday. The 360-degree video brought the plight of refugees home.
“To contemplate it at that level is more real,” she said. “It makes me want to do something more. It humbles me.”
Another participant, Spencer Perkins, said the exhibit puts the refugee crisis in a new perspective.
“I didn’t realize refugees were displaced over and over again for years,” he said. “It makes me realize that we, as a nation, are doing so little for these displaced people. It’s disappointing.”
Worldwide, only a tiny fraction of refugees are resettled. In 2016, the United Nations refugee agency referred 162,600 refugees for resettlement.
For example, Lebanon—a country of first-asylum which is barely the size of Connecticut—has taken in more than one million Syrian refugees since 2011, Baniulis said.
In contrast, between October 1, 2011 and December 31, 2016, the U.S. resettled 18,007 Syrian refugees. All told, the U.S. accepted resettled the largest number of refugees in 2016, accepting 96,900 people. President Donal Trump said he would reduce that number by half.
“At a time when global displacement is at record highs, countries should increase their support for people on the move,” Cone said. “Instead of helping to alleviate this global migration crisis, many of the world’s richest countries—including the U.S.—are closing their borders or sending people back to places where they face death or persecution.”
The exhibit, which recently was in Boulder, Colo. will next be shown in Seattle, Oakland and Santa Monica, Calif.
For more information about Doctors Without Borders, visit http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/.