by Katharine Lake Berz | 1 Feb 2022 | Conflict, Educators' Catalog, Human Rights, Immigration, Middle East, Refugees, University of Toronto Journalism Fellows
Lebanon is suffering one of the worst crises the world has seen in 150 years. The children in one Syrian refugee family have little choice but to work. The Hemo family working in a greenhouse where they earn $10 a day for their labour, November 2021 (All photos by...
More than half a million refugees have fled Ukraine since war broke out one week ago, with more still fleeing the fighting. Throughout history, displacement has gone hand-in-hand with conflict. Decades of violence in Afghanistan displaced more than 2.6 million refugees, with thousands more fleeing last autumn after the U.S. troop withdrawal. (Some, like correspondent Zamir Saar, sought refuge in Ukraine.) According to the UNHCR, since 2011, the crisis in Syria has forced 6.8 million people to leave their country, with another 6.7 million internally displaced.
Now, an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees are living in Lebanon, including Sanam Hemo, her husband, and their seven children. While Lebanon provides safety, the country is experiencing a dire economic crisis, leaving no choice but for all family members — even their four-year-old — to work. Katherine Lake Berz, a journalism fellow at the University of Toronto, gives an up-close account of the reality of refugee life for Sanam’s family and how organizations like UNICEF Canada are seeking solutions to child labor.
Exercise: Ask students to put themselves in Sanam and Othman’s shoes. What would they do differently? What would they do the same?
by Christina MacCorkle | 23 Aug 2021 | Asia, Conflict, Islam, Middle East, Politics, Student Posts, Terrorism, Thacher School, United States, Youth Voices
My generation was born after 9/11. Twenty years after that day, the attacks resonate with us, but we need historical context to grasp why they occurred. People walk past yellow roses and flags placed on the names of 9/11 victims who were veterans, at the 9/11 Memorial...
by Bernd Debusmann Jr | 28 Jan 2021 | Conflict, Donald Trump, Human Rights, Joe Biden, Middle East
Donald Trump knit close ties with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The new U.S. administration under Joe Biden is reassessing relations with the Middle East. Then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden sits with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before a dinner in...
by Bernd Debusmann Jr | 31 Aug 2020 | Conflict, Donald Trump, Middle East
Donald Trump has scored few foreign policy wins with his transactional approach. A peace deal between Israel and the UAE is a feather in his cap. U.S. President Donald Trump announces a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Washington, DC , 13...
by Alistair Lyon | 6 Aug 2020 | Educators' Catalog, Middle East
Disaster was awaiting Lebanon, its finances in tatters. Now a huge chemical explosion has compounded the crushing challenges facing the tiny but pivotal nation. Beirut’s port after the explosion, 5 August 2020 (EPA-EFE/WAEL HAMZEH) It is hard to imagine a...
Students see headlines all day long and have a good sense of the big news events around the world. But when something happens far away, they don’t always understand why it matters to them, because they are young and also because harried real-time news outfits don’t always connect the dots. When a chemical explosion tore through Beirut in August, media organizations around the world flashed photographs, videos and headlines capturing the anguish and destruction. In 900 words, Alistair Lyon goes further, taking readers through Lebanon’s dire circumstances and explaining why it matters to all of us. No region of the world is more complex or more important than the Middle East, and Lyon — a former Middle East diplomatic correspondent for Reuters — offers an exemplary synthesis of the tangled forces at work in the volatile region.