Refugees: Fleeing danger worldwide

This baby was just a couple of months old when a Spanish police diver saved it from drowning. In May 2021, Morocco temporarily relaxed its control of the border with Ceuta. Thousands of people tried to enter the Spanish enclave by swimming along the North African coast. This photograph is seen as an iconic representation of the migration crisis in Ceuta.

The Mediterranean Sea is one of the world's most dangerous migration routes. Many African refugees who try and fail to cross the water to Europe get stuck in Libya. They are constantly fighting to survive, and often have to work in miserable conditions. These young men in Tripoli, many of them still minors, are waiting in the hope of picking up casual work.

Some 40% of refugees are children. In recent years, 1.1 million people from the Rohingya Muslim minority have fled violence by the Myanmar military and crossed into Bangladesh. The Cox's Bazar refugee camp is one of the largest in the world. SOS Children's Villages, an NGO, has warned that violence, drugs and human trafficking are a growing problem there, as are child labor and child marriage.

Recently, the civil war in the Ethiopian region of Tigray has triggered another major refugee movement. More than 90% of the Tigray population is currently dependent on humanitarian aid. Around 1.6 million people have fled to Sudan — 720,000 of whom are children. They are stuck in transit camps, facing an uncertain future.

The Greek islands are refugee hot spots, with people from Syria and Afghanistan regularly attempting to reach them from Turkey. Many refugees were housed in the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos — until it burned down last September. After that, this family came to Athens. But what happens next? The EU has been trying for years to agree on a communal strategy and refugee policy, without success.

There's no school for these Afghan children, who live in a refugee camp in Pakistan. The camp has existed ever since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. Living conditions there are bad: The camp lacks both drinking water and proper accommodation.

Many Venezuelan families, seeing no future for themselves in their home country, have crossed into neighboring Colombia. There, they receive support from the Red Cross. The NGO provides medical and humanitarian aid, and has set up a transit camp in a school in the border town of Arauquita.

Many refugees hope for better future for their children in Germany. At the Lernfreunde Haus in Karlsruhe, refugee children are prepared for entry into the German school system. However, during the COVID pandemic they have missed out on this key element to help them integrate into the new society.