Fara (2) loves soccer. Her father tries to make balls for her by crumpling up anything he can find, but they don’t last long.

Mohammed (13) dreams of being an architect. He used to enjoy walking around Aleppo, looking at houses. Now, many of his favorite buildings have been blown to pieces. He says the strangest thing about war is that you get used to being scared,

Lamar, from Baghdad, sleeps on a blanket in a forest. After two attempts at crossing the sea from Turkey in a small dinghy, her family has come as far as Serbia to find the border with Hungary closed.

Iman (2) has pneumonia and a chest infection, and is spending her third day in hospital. Normally a happy girl, who runs a lot and likes playing in the sand, Iman now feels very tired.

Ralia (7) and Rahaf (13) sleep on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon. A grenade killed their mother and brother in Damascus. They are with their father, and have been sleeping outside for a year.

Walaa (5), in a refugee camp in Lebanon, is distressed at night, because that is when attacks happened when she was at home in Aleppo.

Ahmed (6) falls asleep in the grass after midnight. He carries his own bag on the stretches of the journey that the family covers on foot. His uncle, who has taken care of him since his father was killed in their hometown in northern Syria, says Ahmed is brave and cries only occasionally, in the evenings.

Sham (1) sleeps in his mother’s arms at the border post between Serbia and Hungary. Only a day earlier, refugees had been allowed through, to continue journeys to northern Europe, but just before Sham and his mother arrived, Hungary closed its borders.

Contemporary Issues - 1st prize

Talibes, Modern-day Slaves