07:36
A close-up shot of a five-year-old Afghan girl's innocent eyes, a beautiful doll standing in front of a fence, and a self-portrait taken by an 11-year-old boy using a broken mirror. How do these images make you feel? What is the world like through the lens of children who are suffering in war?
These pictures are part of the project Exile Voices, which teaches photography skills to young refugees and was initiated by the renowned Iranian-born photojournalist Reza Deghati.
“After traveling for decades around the world, he (Reza) decided that photography could be a social tool. Photography could be something that is used to express dreams and sorrows,” said Delazad Deghati, the son of Reza. “He goes to the refugee camps or some tough neighborhoods in the western world, he brings a camera, teaches photography, and gives them some subjects and asks them to tell their own stories.”
On the sidelines of the 2018 Rhodes Forum, an international conference that brings together policy-makers from around the world to discuss current challenges and future trends, which took place on October 5-6 in Rhodes, Greece, Deghati showed photos to Liu Xin, the host of CGTN's The Point, that were taken by children in the Syrian Refugee Camp located in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“We won't be able, even the best photographer would not be able, to express as perfectly as these children about their lives,” Deghati said. He thought these pictures could help raise people's awareness and make them feel that “you have your own responsibility to try to find ways to make their lives better.”