A stark new short video highlights the magnitude and the physical effects of the global refugee crisis.

Artists Min-Hyung Choi and Valentin Guiod have likened the physical and mental endurance of refugees and migrants with Olympic athletes.

The pair worked with French organisation La Cimade – which support refugees and migrants – to produce three short films.

The first of the films highlights the danger of swimming to ‘safety’ – and the films are also a poignant reminder that the refugee crisis is far from over.

Data from the United Nations shows that, since 2014, more than 1.7 million refugees and asylum seekers have arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. But it also estimates that over 15,400 people are dead or missing.

The International Organisation for Migration’s (IMO) Missing Migrants Project “tracks incidents involving migrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, who have died or gone missing in the process of migration”.

According to the IMO: there were 7399 deaths in 2016; there have already been 5204 fatalities in 2017; and, in 2017, drowning caused 2745 deaths.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the refugee crisis is rising.

Its 2016 report shows that worldwide, 65.6 million people have been displaced forcibly.

Around 22.5 million of these are refugees and about half of these are 18 or under.

Just over half (55 per cent) of all refugees come from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan.

Around 552,200 refugees were returned to their countries of origin.

There are 5.3 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN.

The UNHCR also reports that these 65.6 million were displaced “as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations”.

See the video here: https://www.thecanary.co/global/2017/12/09/27-second%E2%80%8B-film-stark-reminder-refugee-crisis-far-video/

Laurie Nowell
AMES Australia Senior Journalist