This story appeared as part of a multimedia project: ‘Talking to Lebanon’s Protestors’ which was co-authored with Niamh Keady-Tabbal.

Since the 17th October, across Lebanon, protestors have gathered in public spaces, constructed demonstration camps and blocked roads, calling for a revolution. A week before, wildfires devastated areas of the country and crippling austerity measures, entrenched corruption and absence of basic public services have been hallmarks of a long-term economic crisis. When proposals for new taxes were announced, including on calls using WhatsApp, protestors took to the streets to demand the resignation of the current government. Prime Minister Saad Hariri stepped down after eleven days of demonstrations, but at the time of writing, other ministers had not, and protestors remained on Lebanon’s streets.

Protestors interviewed for this project highlighted that the uprising has dramatically challenged the entrenched sectarian divisions that divide the country. Lebanon has eighteen officially recognised religious groups and the political system, based on power sharing between religious sects, means representation in government is defined along confessional lines.

“All of them means all of them”, is the defining chant and slogan that has dominated demonstrations all over the country. The words embody the unified nature of the movement and it’s rejection of traditional sectarian allegiances. Protestors demand the overhaul of the cabinet and that the entirety of the government resigns.

To mark the thirteenth day of demonstrations and reflect this unity, protestors formed a human chain that stretched across the country, from Tripoli to Tyre — over 170km.

The photos and videos below show some of the women who led the chain.

“I’ve got to go. I think we have to close our Alpha centre now,” Jasmine Doust told me when I asked her about the fire that engulfed a huge section of the refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos last night.

Doust leads Samos Volunteers, a group that provides respite and services to thousands of refugees stranded on the island. Late last night, they opened the doors of the Alpha centre, usually reserved for daytime activities, to more than two-hundred women and children fleeing fire, fighting and tear gas.

“People sheltering in the Centre were scared, exhausted and dealing with the symptoms of tear gas. Children’s eyes were streaming from the gas. People lost everything they owned.”

“Tents, clothing, any last belongings they might have had from their home countries.”

The fire started after a fight yesterday evening and spread quickly through flimsy canvas tents where gas bottles used for cooking and heating exploded. As the extent of the wreckage became clear this morning, it is estimated that the shelter and belongings of up to 700 people have been destroyed.

Tensions on Samos are growing, where nearly 6,000 people now live in a camp designed for 648 people.

“The intense overcrowding and lack of basic services means the smallest issues are prone to rapid escalation. This is not the first time that a fight has broken out — and it won’t be the last — but it has been the most devastating incident we’ve experienced in the last three and a half years. Today, for the safety of our volunteers and service users, we had to close the Alpha Centre.’’

Last night a live video, posted by Samos News 24, shows those who fled the fire and tear gas police used to clear the camp, watching the flames from beneath the camp on the hills.

“Electricity went down and you could only hear the sounds of sirens and explosions in the darkness. Imagine how it was for kids who just fled the war,” said an NGO employee on Samos who asked that their name wasn’t published.

Over the last few months, the situation on the Greek islands, where asylum seekers and migrants attempting to reach Europe via. Turkey arrive, has reached breaking point. So far this year, nearly 50,000 people have reached Greece and 1/5 of them arrived in September alone.

The crisis, which has prevailed since a deal was struck between Turkey and Europe in March 2016 to prevent the entry of asylum seekers to Greece and return most new arrivals to Turkey, is getting worse. The Greek island camps have remained overcrowded and under-resourced, meanwhile legal procedures have buckled under the pressure. The reality of the deal is that asylum seekers and migrants continue to reach Greece. Currently, over 16,500 people are contained in appalling conditions with no idea of when, or if, they will leave.

Since the spike in arrivals that has continued since August, NGOs and campaigners are warning a crisis reminiscent of 2015 gripping the islands. Less than two weeks ago, a fire destroyed a large section of the infamous Moria camp on Lesvos that receives the majority of refugees and the number of boats that capsize attempting to reach Greece is increasing again.

As winter approaches, people stranded in these camps take more risks to stay warm and eat hot food. Two years ago, an elderly woman and her grandchild were killed in Lesvos when a gas canister they were using to make a warm meal exploded in a tent. It is not just fighting that causes these fires but overcrowding, severely unsafe structures, gas canisters that are used for cooking and heating and overloaded electricity supplies.

Doust warns that without drastic action, this will not be the last disaster and that so far, on Samos, authorities have done nothing to respond to the increase in arrivals which has created an emergency.

“We don’t know what is going to happen tonight. Many families have been leaving the camp and moving down to the town with all their belongings and blankets. We believe many will sleep on the streets tonight rather than risk staying in the camp.”

Samos Volunteers are collecting donations to respond to the urgent needs of people affected and displaced by last nights fire.

You can donate online here.

In recent months, NGOs, campaigners and politicians have warned that the refugee crisis in Greece is at breaking point. In September, at least ten thousand asylum seekers and migrants arrived from Turkey. Though spikes in arrivals have occurred since a landmark deal between the EU and Turkey was implemented in March 2016 in response to the crisis, they have continued at a much lower rate. However, the recent surge has lasted over three months and of the 82,872 migrants and asylum seekers that have arrived in Europe this year, those who enter via. Greece now account for over half.

Though the majority of the other half reached Europe through Spain, the crackdown on rescue efforts at sea has been led by Matteo Salvini, who served as Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Italy until last month. Salvini’s approach to prevent those who leave Libya reaching Italy has meant the central Mediterranean has been almost completely emptied of NGO Search and Rescue [SAR] vessels. Even during months particularly busy or dangerous for crossings, there have been times when no NGO ships have been in the SAR zone and frequently just one has covered the entire area. Now, under legislation introduced in August, rescue ships have been barred from entering Italian territorial waters and docking, preventing those rescued from disembarking. Those that defy the ban face a fine of up to a million euros, arrest and risk the ship being impounded.

In both Italy and Greece, alongside other policies, the criminalisation of rescue workers has been a hallmark of efforts to curtail refugee and migrant arrivals to Europe. The trial of Sarah Mardini, a Syrian swimmer with refugee status in Germany, who had been working in a rescue team on the Greek island Lesvos and her colleague Sean Binder, is ongoing. Though the pair have been released on bail, the charges levelled against them, including smuggling and espionage, carry sentences of twenty years. Pia Klemp, the captain of an NGO rescue vessel, Iuventa, operating between Libya and Italy, also faces jail for twenty years if convicted of charges of aiding illegal immigration.

Italy

Under international law, all ships that are capable are obligated to rescue those in distress at sea and bring them to safety. Simultaneously, the principle of non-refoulment, which underpins the 1951 Refugee Convention, prohibits the return of refugees to countries where they face persecution. The appalling conditions in Libya’s migrant detention centres have been widely reported, as have the myriad of abuses that occur within them, including sexual violenceand torture. By criminalising those who rescue migrants and refugees at sea these principles have been placed in severe jeopardy.

The number of ships willing or able to rescue refugees and migrants has decreased significantly. Those that do are now often faced with no choice but to breach the law. If rescuers cede to pressure to return people to Libya, they do so to a country widely regarded as unsafe. Alternatively, captains face arrest if they enter Italian waters illegally to allow migrants and asylum seekers to disembark safely in Europe.

Since the Italian legislation has been implemented, rescue ships have frequently become stranded for weeks at sea with hundreds of people onboard. Responding to an emergency submission by SeaWatch Captain, Carola Rackete, and a number of those onboard the vessel, which had been refused docking for over two weeks in mid-2019, The European Court of Human Rights decided not to grant the interim measure requested: that those onboard be allowed to disembark.Rackete was later detained after entering Italian waters without permission. Her decision meant those onboard were able to exercise their rights under EU law, to claim asylum, contained in The European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Yet, overall, Italian anti-rescue policies have been exceedingly effective in hampering NGO rescue vessels from carrying out their duties and preventing people reaching Italy. In June, around 150 people drowned in a deadly shipwreck near the coast of Libya, attempting to reach Italy. Two months later, according to the UNHCR, at least forty people died when another boat sank after leaving Libya. The survivors of both shipwrecks — around 200 people — were all returned to Libya.

Greece

When the refugee crisis first hit Greece in 2014, NGO rescue vessels were the source of much of the footage which galvanised widespread response throughout Europe. As in Italy, for the first year of the crisis in Greece, NGO vessels joined the Coast Guard to rescue thousands of refugees and migrants at sea. Frequently, the dangerous and often deadly situation in the sea was communicated, as well as the lack of resources to deal with the spiralling crisis.

Evidence of illegal ‘push-backs’ - when boats are deliberately pushed back into the territorial waters they have come from, and physical violence by members of the Coast Guard against refugees and migrants was also videotaped and recorded. Now, although news from the ground is that of severely overcrowded camps and most recently, of a fire in Moria camp on Lesvos that killed one woman and left nine others injured, accurate and sustained information regarding the situation at sea is almost totally obscured.

The sharp increase in arrivals, likely to be bolstered by the continued Syrian government bombardment of Idlib, renewed unrest in Iraq and impending military action by Turkey in North-East Syria, means large numbers of people are boarding dinghies that make it past Turkish Coast Guard patrols and land on Greek island beaches.

Often, boat landings or approaches to landings are when those onboard are subject to one of the most dangerous parts of their journey — caused by rocks, inadequate petrol or rushes that cause the dinghies to capsize. Since the deal, Frontex and the Greek Coast Guard have intercepted the majority of boats at sea and brought passengers to the island ports. However, as crossings have increased again, existing resources are once again unable to cope. The Greek government have announced they will bolster patrols but this is unlikely to be adequate and there are few mechanisms in place to ensure rights at sea are being respected.

Following the Italian example, and the ongoing trial of Mardini and Binder, aid groups on the Greek islands are both prevented and discouraged from carrying out the same efforts they implemented in response to the initial crisis. On Lesvos, one NGO vessel is in operation and on neighbouring islands, Chios and Samos, the Coast Guard and Frontex are the only vessels specifically tasked with responding to boats carrying asylum seekers and migrants.

Like in Italy, the focus is not on protecting the rights of those rescued but returning them. The proposals unveiled by the Greek government to tackle the crisis are to expedite returns to Turkey and closed camps for those with rejected asylum claims. These measures may contradict fundamental protections enshrined in international and EU law, that provide for the right to claim asylum, regardless of nationality. Contrarily, Turkey, considered a ‘safe-third country’ under the controversial deal, retains a geographical limitation on the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Under the limitation, which according to EU law means that Turkey should not be considered a safe country, only people born in a European country qualify for full refugee status. Yet, nearly all of those who arrive in Turkey are from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Furthermore, Turkish authorities have been repeatedly called out for forcibly returning refugees to Syria.

As those leaving Turkey for Greece looks set to continue to increase, allowing NGO SAR ships to assist the Coast Guard operations, including patrols to lookout for boats in distress, will be essential in preventing shipwrecks from occurring and rescuing people when they do. What’s more, these NGOs act as monitors that help to ensure the fundamental rights of those at sea are protected and policies of return that have guided the European response are not implemented forcibly or outside of the law.

Sharing responsibility

It is crucial that plans to tackle the crises in Greece and Italy, reverse the anti-rescue precedent set by Salvini and many other European leaders. Instead, sustainable solutions that put the lives and rights of refugees and migrants first must be implemented. At the end of September, a plan to relocate those rescued at sea to member states and end the chaos caused by closed ports, was drafted by EU leaders in Brussels. However, it was rejectedjust two weeks later. Only seven of the twenty-eight EU member states agreed to the proposal, which planned to bring those who are rescued at sea to willing EU states and ‘fast track’ asylum seekers. The plans were typical of EU policy — focused on speed and returns — however, the resounding rejection highlights the enduring deadlock on the crisis.

So long as this standoff continues alongside the criminalisation of rescue efforts at sea, the risk of causalities on an already deadly route will increase. As winter approaches, just like the crisis on the ground, dangers at sea will multiply. Last week, a boat bound for the Greek island of Chios sank, killing seven Turkish asylum seekers onboard. NGO SAR vessels, often supported by significant public funds, willing to help prevent these tragedies must be assisted in their work, not prevented.

‘’Hamid* and his kids are in jail, they were rejected again,’’ a volunteer on the Greek island of Chios called to tell me late last year.

Since the refugee crisis began in 2015, Chios has received the second largest number of refugees fleeing to Europe via. Turkey. The youngest of the imprisoned Syrian Kurdish family was three-years-old. Days before, I had assisted Save The Children with a fourteen-year-old who had sliced up his wrists for the third time and sat beside the sea with a fifteen-year-old who wanted to know if I thought he should take anti-depressants. Both of the unaccompanied boys were Syrian.

The outrage that has followed the barbaric treatment of asylum seeking children being forcibly separated from their parents in The United States must continue and result in action. Though, it’s absolutely essential we remember that European governments attitudes to asylum seekers and refugees aren’t all that different to those across the Atlantic.

French policies and treatment of asylum seekers and refugees are notoriously horrific. Just days after French President Emanuel Macron criticised Italy for refusing to take in a rescue ship with over 600 people onboard, Oxfam alleged French authorities have been detaining kids as young as twelve without food or water, taking their sim cards, cutting the soles from their shoes and then illegally deporting them (to Italy.)

The Calais camp was finally burnt to the ground by French riot police last year, leaving hundreds of unaccompanied minors on the streets — rather than in a shanty camp. The UK has exacerbated this suffering by repeatedly refusing to take in unaccompanied children. In Serbia, Hungary and across the Balkans minors lived through freezing winters in abandoned warehouses and are trafficked for work and sex. Human rights groups warned over a hundred teenagers travelling alone were detained in police cells in Greece in 2017.

In Greece, I’ve met countless minors with family members in other European member states. Many waited over a year to be reunited and I know others still waiting. One sixteen-year-old, whose family is in Germany, initially rollerbladed around the island using his English to translate for a range of organisations. Now, over a year has passed and he is listless. He is neither with his family or receiving a proper education — he speaks three languages fluently and is a talented footballer.

In Europe, it’s true, we do not systematically separate children from their parents when they reach our borders. Though, it regularly happens directly and indirectly.

Less than a year ago, a nine-year-old was returned to Turkey during a rescue operation when the boat carrying him and his mother sank, she was brought to Greece. He was then detained in Turkey for months and forced to make the journey to Europe alone with smugglers — no legal routes existed for them to be reunited. One morning in Chios port I met three shivering Afghan teenagers travelling alone. They’d just been pulled from the sea and asked me for cigarettes. Each time I saw them again they sniggered, whispering ‘’baby’’, as I had called them that cold morning.

The landmark piece of legislation in response to the European refugee crisis is a deal with Turkey that aims to simply stop refugees arriving at the Greek island entry points and return those who do. It was widely regarded as against principles of international law and the refugee convention when introduced in March 2016. Now, it’s failure and cruel procedures have resulted in a largely silent, stagnant humanitarian crisis on the edges of Europe.

In Italy, occasionally, we hear of the huge numbers of people who continue to cross the Med in search of safety in Europe — most recently when the Italian government refused to let the rescue boat dock that was eventually taken in by Spain.

Most good weather days still see at least one boat reach a Greek frontier island carrying an average of about forty people. Those who arrive are trapped in island camps for periods regularly surpassing nine months before proceeding to the overcrowded mainland and beginning an asylum case that could be rejected. Many people have received interview dates that are over a year away. Over half of these people are women and children.

In Europe, our refugee crisis may have gone silent yet it continues unabated and with reinvigorated cruelty. We absolutely should be protesting what’s happening in America but not without turning our attention to what’s happening here.

Indeed, when searching my pictures for this article, I came across photos of a mother seperated from her 8-month-old baby for two weeks; a nine-year-old Syrian girl who lost her own mother and was injured during violence in the camp and a three-year-old who was nearly burned alive when fascists detonated a molotov cocktail on her tent.

Hamid’s children were imprisoned for three days before being released with their mother. Police then waited outside their home for 24 hours a day. ‘’Now whenever they see a police officer or car they get scared,’’ he told me.

**Hamid’s name was changed in order to protect his identity.

A few days ago, I came back to a video that circulated during the #MeToo campaign, showing a group of men unable to distinguish between sexual assault scenarios and scenes of pornography. Beside it on YouTube, there were adverts of women in their underwear and when I tried to convert it to a downloadable version, cue ‘cam girl’ adverts and porn links.

And now the news that the suspected Toronto van driver, Alek Minassian, who killed ten people on Monday was a member of the online ‘incel’ community. The violently misogynistic online movement is made up of ‘involuntary celibate’ men who advocate for rape and abuse of women online. The trial of journalist Kim Wall’s killer has also been in the press, the details of the gruesome murder include that the accused watched numerous violent porn videos before killing her on his submarine last year. These are, of course, extreme cases and the extent to which the individuals physical actions correlate with their online may never be known. But as digital platforms come under fire for disrupting our lives on so many other levels, it may be a mistake for the immense power of #MeToo not to use it’s influence to address a growing culture of unfettered online misogyny.

#MeToo has been instrumental in the removal of high-level abusers and an unprecedented awareness drive, but here it is again: the modern day dilemma — how much of our online world is our real one?

For millions of young millennial girls, the plastic figurines of Barbie dolls, with a slim waist, breasts, blue eyes and blonde hair were in our hands early on. But then, as older children or young teenagers, we graduated to the overtly sexualised music videos of stars like Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears — childhood dollish characters morphed into objects of male desire that were deemed so extreme they were banned from French daytime TV. Kim Kardashian followed closely, a woman made famous by a pornographic video tape.

Online, the porn industry is a world where an estimated 88–94% of violent acts are against women and particularly popular categories are ‘Teen’ and ‘Amateur.’ In line with new UK legislation, Porn Hub will now introduce a login system and age ID check. Measures that prevent under-eighteens accessing explicit content are positive but it’s probably naive to think that huge amounts won’t remain available without restriction. It’s also worth bearing in mind people may be pushed to more extreme sites with no regulations.

Legislation aimed at preventing and punishing abuse, assault, harassment and inequality must be fought for and revised, but enduring conversation and action surrounding our online behaviour is long overdue. #MeToo spelled the end for a huge number of public figures and we rightfully rejoiced but this will be short-lived if we don’t tackle the culture of violent inequality that dominates the screens we spend more and more time in front of.

The every day abuser is blurred into representations entrenched and often encouraged in every day society. Chuck Bass became a heartthrob from hit TV show Gossip Girl’s first episode, despite trying to rape a teenage girl and then to sell his girlfriend for a hotel (who he later married.) For many watching, the line between abuse and unconditional love was blurred, the stereotype of the desirable ‘bad boy’ confirmed.That the actor has now been accused of assault by four different women is a disturbing irony.

Grammy award-winning musician The Weeknd’s latest album is highly speculated to be about Selena Gomez, a former Disney princess. Lyrics refer to an unknown girl as ‘an equestrian’ explicitly eluding to the way he has sex with her, asking who she belongs to now. Many pornstars claim their job is empowering, however the sex scenes overwhelmingly take the Weeknd’s approach - men have sex with women whose pleasure is inferior to theirs.

Meanwhile, sex seems as available as it is disposable. Logging onto Tinder gives us the ability to swipe left and right and effortlessly setup a date or several. Yet, millennials are getting laid less than any generation in the last two decades; study after study tells us that we are suffering an epidemic of loneliness. A casual link between the very unreal images that are produced of women and sex alongside the lessening of intimate encounters between actual people should maybe be explored. After all, isn’t the ‘incel’ community’s hatred of women partially driven by their inability to physically connect with them?

What’s more, we are worryingly apathetic to the plight of those who are providing for our porn obsession — a premise on which capitalism relies — similarly the hands behind high street fashion are often ignored. As consumers, we feed a chain of supply and demand. If the category of teen is most popular, young women meeting the visual requirements will be sought out. Their age makes them vulnerable, the environment which they have grown up: even more so. And, what happens to the unsuccessful women, forced into lower paid jobs and a world saturated by exploitation? We rarely find out.

Women continue to be portrayed as the passive receivers of male domination or sexualised images on magazines covers but now across the internet too, where regulation is a mythical concept. Over 800 UK primary school children were excluded between 2013 and 2017 for bringing pornographic or explicit imagery into their classrooms. Exclusion is unlikely to be the answer and banning porn, as some call for, will just push it further from regulation and it’s performers further from safety. Instead, galvanising the potential of #MeToo into plausible and innovative solutions to reshape both content and appetite is essential.

For young girls and boys, elements of the curriculum informing and explaining these phenomenons must be developed. American universities are already piloting programmes in ‘dating’ and ‘how to love’ — we are in a recession of social connection and an abundance of fantasy sex and text relationships. The harsh reality of this world is it is overwhelmingly backwards in it’s treatment of women. Young people are learning of our most intimate act through videos of young women being ‘face f*cked’, referred to as ‘b*tches’ and ‘sl*ts’ to be ‘punished’ or ‘taught a lesson.’ These fantasies and fetishes have been safely and enjoyably practiced for centuries, but porn rarely presents them as such. If you need confirmation, I implore you to visit ‘Pornhub’ or ‘XHamster’ — two of the most popular sites.

The Internet is currently being berated for it’s role in mental health issues in young people — for sabotaging our capabilities of social connection. It seems as if our relationships with sex and indeed each other may be on the frontline. Meanwhile our digital feet take giant steps backwards on the path to gender equality. It’s undeniable, #MeToo has and is doing an immense amount of good — but it may be time to turn it’s attention to where it was birthed — social media and the web. The tragedy of Kim Wall’s death and those killed in Toronto may have little to do with what the killers found on the internet, but overwhelming evidence suggests that online our fight for gender equality isn’t just stunted but in decline. As Tarana Burke, who coined #MeToo told The Guardian: ‘’Let’s talk about why, and let’s talk about what happens after.’’

Additional reporting: Niamh Keady-Tabbal
This article appeared as part of an interactive story: “The Unknown: Two years of the EU/Turkey Deal”

From behind a barbed wire fence on the 25th March 2016, Wassim Omar, an English teacher from the Syrian capital of Damascus appealed to the European public: ‘’Will you return us to Turkey? Or let us continue to Europe? All the people here want one thing, to get our papers and continue our journey.’’ Wearing a black football jumper, his face strained, as he spoke on behalf of hundreds of refugees who had been locked inside Vial registration camp on the Greek island of Chios for five days.

Wassim, his wife and three children arrived in Chios on the 20th March 2016, the first day of the monumental agreement between Europe and Turkey designed to end the flows of migration from Turkish shores to Greece.

‘’Nobody knew what would happen after the deal. Nobody knew what this deal is. Even after we arrived when we asked UN. We asked EASO (The European Asylum Service.) We asked organisations. We asked them about the deal, what they knew. All of them said we don’t know what this deal is. None of them had any information about this deal.’’

Prevailing conflicts across The Middle East and the Syrian civil war created a refugee crisis the worst since the second world war, as hundreds of thousands of people fled to Europe via. Turkish shores in 2015 and 2016 and continued on to other European countries.

Europe responded with a policy of containing refugees and returning them. The Balkan borders were closed and the EU/Turkey deal introduced a procedure that meant all those who reached the Greek islands should be deported to Turkey unless it was found to be ‘unsafe’ for them individually.

“They knew just that if you arrived after 20 March you have to stay in Greece and have asylum in Greece or you have to go back to Turkey. But no more.This is the words they were saying to us,’’ Wassim remembers.

He stops our phone call briefly, ‘’I have to go to a meeting.’’ He is helping with translation for an NGO and learning German. Wassim is now a recipient of international protection in Germany and his children are in school. Throughout our conversation Wassim laments the long period they and other refugee children spend without education. ‘’Now they are learning the language, though, the youngest keeps saying ‘my name is school’ instead of his name,’’ he smiles.

But for their mother and father, who both taught at a university in Damascus, this has been an arduous journey that began over a year before they arrived in Germany.

The family fled Syria on the 10th March 2016, ‘’we heard a bit about the deal but we arrived in Turkey before the fifteenth (of March) so we thought we had time.’’ Wassim calmly and effortlessly recalls the dates and timings of the entire period.

Unfortunately, his family’s first attempt to cross the sea to Greece was unsuccessful. On the second, they had a very difficult trip and were rescued in the middle of the sea after five hours. ‘’When we arrived to land we felt like we had been born again, all the people did,’’ he smiles.

But after three hours those who arrived were transferred to a closed hotspot, named Vial, in the mountains of Chios island. Those inside were not allowed to go out. “It was guarded by the police and the army. The food was not enough and at the same time you couldn’t go out. It wasn’t like a prison, it really was a prison.’’

Nearly two weeks after the deal began, a fight broke out inside Vial camp. ‘’I will be honest, not because these people are bad but because they had/have many problems and a lot of stress.”

After the sun rose the next morning, Wassim estimates about 250 people broke through the camp’s fences and walked to the port of Chios.

There, they setup a camp which he says was symbolic of their situation — as it prevented ships leaving or arriving to the island being easily accessed. “But, also, we just needed somewhere safe.’’

After a week, refugees were violently removed by the police. Video footage of the event shows Greek authorites beating and dragging refugees away from their tents and throwing canisters of teargas.

Wassim, his family and eventually over a thousand other refugees were crammed into Souda, a municipality run camp in the town centre, wedged between the ruins of old castle walls where makeshift tents outnumbered official infrastructure.

As the arrivals continued, the Vial hotspot was crowded with double in it’s intended capacity and by the summer of 2016 the island was hosting nearly 3000 refugees.

According to the deal, European countries were to resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every one that was returned. Turkey has received billions of euros and was promised an acceleration of Turkish citizens visa-free travel in Europe.

In reality, many refugees became stranded on the Aegean islands. The Greek asylum system buckled under the strain, meanwhile leading human rights organisations questioned the legality of the deal itself and the deplorable living conditions it created. Very few asylum seekers have been forcibly returned under the deal and are instead confined to island camps for periods that often surpass a year.

“We were told by other people who came before us when you arrive to Chios or Greece in general you are in the first step of Europe don’t worry you’re safe everything will be okay and all people help you.” It wasn’t until three months after Wassim’s family arrived that their admissibility procedures began.

‘’We waited without doing anything and every time we asked the UN or EASO ‘When are you going to start our procedure? When will we have our papers to move tothe mainland? They said you have to wait — because there is nobody to work on your asylum. They had no rules. They didn’t know what to do. If you came after the deal, there was no system.’’

“The European people and Turkey they have this deal but they didn’t manage to expect even one person to come after. It’s like, okay, I have deal now and I have to expect after this deal that one refugee will come and what will I do with these refugees? How will Imanage these refugees? Will I send him directly to Turkey or will I give them asylum here in Greece?”

I ask Wassim how he explais what has happened to his children. He says that now they are finally living a normal life again, his eldest daughter has started to remember Syria. “She remembers everything we had - our trees, our home, our family and our life there.”

Additional reporting: Niamh Keady-Tabbal

This article appeared as part of an interactive story: ‘’The Unknown: Two years of the EU/Turkey Deal”

Abdulrahman answers the phone from a house he and his brother have been hiding in for over five months. Both young Syrian men have been trapped on the Greek island of Chios since April last year. If discovered by police will be detained until a court hearing determines whether they will be returned to Turkey. ‘’There was a big roundup of people today,’’ a friend in the room says blankly, overhearing the conversation.

Their situation is common to an increasing number of the 13,000 asylum seekers who have become trapped on the Greek islands since a landmark agreement between Europe and Turkey.

‘The EU/Turkey Deal’ has been in force since March 2016, dramatically reducing the number of refugees reaching Greece. It implemented a system whereby those who do arrive are first assessed if Turkey is safe for them. Unless it is found to be unsafe, they will be deported and prevented from claiming asylum in Greece.

For those who receive rejections to their applications and following appeal the only option is to hide or be imprisoned until a court case, which can take over six months, determines if they will finally be deported.

Abdulrahman’s younger brother, Ghaith, is being treated for epilepsy and suffers other behavioural difficulties that went unnoticed and ignored when they first arrived. Abdulrahman says all of his concern has been for his brother since they fled Syria in 2016.

Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder, where brain function becomes abnormal. It causes seizures, periods of unusual behavior and loss of awareness.

‘’We lived in Turkey for a year and a half, without any problem, it wasn’t until my brother had an issue with the mafia and they said we had three days to leave that we fled,’’ this is a common problem for Ghaith. His condition frequently renders him unable to understand social situations and Abdulrahman explains that often he will wander over to people who are fighting or being violent. Since the pair left Turkey, the conditions in the overcrowded Souda camp on Chios meant Ghaith became entirely dependent on Abdulrahman.

‘’He couldn’t do anything for the first month, he didn’t go out of his small tent and he found it very difficult to make friends. But his profession is a barber and this allowed him to eventually communicate with people.”

Walking down the dusty path between the shelters and tents, Ghaith could often be found cutting the hair of Souda’s residents. As the brothers became friends with people, Abdulrahman was able to explain to his neighbours the problems his brother suffered.

When they were both called for their first interview, Abdulrahman says he thought it was for asylum in Greece. “I didn’t know anything about this EU/Turkey agreement before I arrived. I thought we would just go and start a life in Europe, we thought it would be a great place. I thought we would get a decision if we had refugee status or not.’’

In fact, this interview was for ‘admissibility’, to determine whether Turkey was unsafe for him. Only then would Abdulrahman be allowed to apply for asylum in Greece and receive refugee status — the defining procedure of the EU/Turkey deal.

However, a system of vulnerability dictates that persons who are at special risk and fall under a number of categories, should bypass this procedure and move straight to their application for asylum in Greece. Included as one of these categories, is severe mental disorders and psychosis, there is evidence that Ghaith fulfils the criteria of this category which should have been identified in the medical screening when he first arrived.

Abdulrahman remembers on the first day he and his brother arrived on Chios. They were taken to Vial camp and, ‘’a building they called an asylum office behind the cage (‘the cage’ was a metal barred container where new arrivals waited to be registered). We were waiting for the procedure to take our fingerprints and become numbers. They didn’t care about us and were asking questions like: What documents we had from Syria and if we have health or mental issues. We wanted to be specific and explain for them about Ghaith’s condition but they just ignored us.”

Leading human rights organisations have criticised the medical screening process for new arrivals to the Greek islands, particularly that of vulnerable individuals.

Abdulrahman says, instead, he spent his entire admissibility interview trying to highlight his brother’s condition but the interviewer kept returning to the issue of Turkey. Despite this, a month after, his brother was recalled for a vulnerability interview. ‘’The call was from an unknown number, they just told us we are from EASO and you have an interview on Monday.’’

‘’It was the same interviewer, the same interpreter and no social worker,’’ Abdulrahman recalls. ‘’I argued with the EASO worker that I should be allowed to go with my brother, I know it’s his right, that because of his condition he should be allowed someone who makes him feel comfortable with him.’’ His tone changes, ‘’I’m going to read you some of his transcript from this interview.”

“First question: What age did you start your education? His answer — I started in the first grade and finished in the seventh. He didn’t say any number or his age because obviously he didn’t know what they were asking — he didn’t understand.”

“The second question: At what age did you start, what age is this period? His answer was grade seven, I don’t remember how old I was. They asked him again, what is the usual age for starting school? Usually in Syria we start school around age six — but his answer was, maybe two or three.”

Abdulrahman started to spend his time translating and explaining the procedures to new arrivals so they didn’t repeat his ‘mistakes’, as he calls them

But in August, both brothers were rejected for a second time, without any other choice Abdulrahman rented a house and they went into hiding.

“There were patrols all the time to hunt rejected people and put them in jail in order to send them to Turkey and we have to hide from them. I tried to convince my brother that going out is now dangerous and he shouldn’t. Maybe he listened for the first couple days but after that I knew I couldn’t stop him from seeing the world.”

Finally, racked with guilt, I ask Abdulrahman if he thinks he will be deported to Turkey. “You know, when you are persecuted and you know what might be your doom. The first thing in my mind will be my brother and the people trying to hunt him.”

**The names have been changed in this article for the brother’s fear of repercussions. However, the interview transcript and medical report have been independently verified.

Syrine* is sitting on the edge of a bed inside a tidy room for two, in ‘City Plaza’ — a squatted Greek hotel where solidarians from all over the world have flocked to bring respite to its refugee residents. Her little son started walking yesterday. In-between our conversation she holds out her hands catching him as he falls down and soothing him, ‘’I looked on Facebook to find out what to do when he was crying, I was alone with a baby…I didn’t know anything,’’ she remembers before returning to her story.

‘’I’ve thought about telling it a lot,’’ she smiled when we asked if we could write it down. The strength with which she carried herself compelled me to ask and, at the same time, made me worry she’d laugh. For her, bravery came so naturally, a 21-year-old mother who we had first met in the January darkness in the centre of Athens.

Her husband had disappeared the previous evening. He had gone out to buy cigarettes and never came home. The next day she called the main hospitals, ‘’he wasn’t there. I was relieved a little,’’ Syrine smiles shakily. But a few hours later, she discovered he was in prison, after being caught without the legal papers for refugees in Athens. Too scared to return to where she had been staying, Syrine had been pushing her son, Salah, around the streets in a buggy ever since.

Alone and homeless, remarkably she kept a clear head. She spoke calmly in English, asking for a lawyer to come the next day to try and resolve the situation for herself and her family.

It wasn’t the first time. The young Tunisian woman has spent nearly three years running to protect herself, her husband and their son. Salah was eight-months-old when they fled the country after Syrine’s relatives threatened to kill her in revenge for bringing dishonour to the family. The couple had managed to marry just before Salah was born, but Syrine’s family continued to look for her. ‘’My brother would do it, I know he would.” Until then, she had been at university, hiding the relationship and the pregnancy from her family. “I didn’t want an abortion, it’s easy, but it was my baby with the man I loved.’’

She described the double-life she was leading in Tunisia, scrolling through old Facebook posts and event pages of the electronic music nights she and her husband would attend in the city of Sousse, close to the country’s capital, Tunis.

Tunisia has made significant legal advancements in the push towards gender equality, including lifting a ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men and ending a law that meant rapists could escape punishment by marrying their victims. However, systematic violence against women still persists: In 2016, The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women said 70% of Tunisian women were victims of abuse and honour killings in Tunisia are still reported. ‘’One man told me there was no hope for asylum and I should just go back,’’ she shakes her head — ‘’he has no idea.’’ My father is a famous man, he cares about what the people think, not about me — we had to leave.’’

After fleeing to Turkey, they arrived on the Greek island of Lesvos. Syrine describes what she saw in the camp as unbelievable, ‘’everywhere children without clothes or shoes.’’ ‘’Some people stay there for over a year — one year!,’’ her eyes widen, ‘’I can’t believe,’’ ‘’one year — I would go crazy.’’ Moria camp has become an infamous symbol of the European refugee crisis where living conditions that lie behind barbed wire fences have been repeatedly condemned by leading human rights organisations. “We went to a hotel the next day and travelled to the mainland illegally. I couldn’t live there… with a baby,’’ she shakes her head.

‘’I think he misses him, he was happier before”, she gestures to Salah, as he refuses food in a restaurant close by to where she is staying. Syrine had spent the last weeks trying to arrange paperwork for her husband to no avail. As the pair had left the previous island camp without the correct documents, she was told she would have to return if their asylum case was to be processed as a couple. Though, Syrine relentlessly tried many other ways, ‘’every day I wake up early, I go to this organisation — Katahaki (The Greek Asylum Sevice) — but each day passes and and nothing happens. Every night I would fall asleep and hope tomorrow will bring a solution.’’

But it hasn’t, so today she is leaving. Her hair is more blonde and she’s cut it shorter, her husband is still imprisoned and Syrine is forced to leave her safe room in the hotel — to travel back to a camp* and live alone.

‘’It’s a dangerous step, but I must do it. I must go back there to help my husband,’’’ she falters, only a few days were spent there before — but she’s seen enough to know the dangers, the difficulties, the fear — not being able to go to the toilet after a certain time, sleeping with her belongings wrapped in her arms with her baby.

We find Syrine’s suitcase and bags parked outside the hotel, she comes out a few minutes later. Her face is made up, she looks European. It’s deliberate, for fear of police and discrimination she pulls a hat over her son’s dark curls, speaking to him in English. Walking towards the train, she ran into friends on the street, another goodbye.

She must have made the same trip, just in the other direction with her husband only months before. The closer we got the more her face looked as if it would crumble — her nervousness of the uncertainty that awaited her and her little baby lurching closer and closer each station we passed — but it never did.

“I studied one year of architecture, then nursing but now I think I want to be a mechanic,” she told us. Off the train, she gathered herself again, struggling to collapse the buggy into a taxi as the driver tutted impatiently, the hinges catching on baby toys — as ever, she held her cool — once again methodically packing her life belongings.

• Syrine and Saleh are false names used to protect identities.

After the horrifying stories of Oxfam’s workers in Haiti, it’s now the United Nations — whose aid workers stand accused of trading sex for aid in Syria. Sadly, such reports are nothing new, United Nations peace keepers have been repeatedly found to have used prostitutes (also in Haiti) and even rape children in countries they are deployed. The stain of peace keepers widespread use of prostitutes during the Bosnian war, made famous in the Whistleblower, has followed the UN to The Central African Republic (CAR) and beyond.

In the midst of the #MeToo allegations, over 150 female UN employees also reported harassment or assault from their own colleagues. A report by The Guardian, found the UN had allowed a culture of sexual harassment and assault to flourish.

For the women, at the centre of the worst crises worldwide, and those working to alleviate them, this is long reported behaviour and our collective response just simply isn’t good enough. Taking on Westminster, Weinstein and a huge number of others was symbolic of a huge achievement but I doubt I was the only one left wondering what would become of the women at the bottom of society; the most ‘at risk’ groups, those without status, savings, social media and support. What would we do to tackle the environments that leaves these abuses to fester, especially in sectors it is seemingly entrenched?

In the final three months of 2017, over forty claims of harassment and abuse were made against UN peacekeeping forces, agencies, programmes and funds.

‘’Where there is peacekeepers there is prostitutes’’, is an all too common tale. United Nations Peacekeepers are immune from the law of the country they are working within and the devastation of war or crisis creates large scale unrest, economic instability and desperation. From CAR to Syria, the rule of law is replaced with the rule of war and with it the rapid dissolution of traditional societal expectations. We must look at aid workers and peace keepers home societies, too, and ensure that the fight for equality is inclusive and deep, that it reaches women of all backgrounds and treats them with equality. That we delve into the historical racist and colonialist ideals that set a precedent for women of certain race, colour or background to be particularly vulnerable to such abuse — that we explain why and demand it ends.

Foreign aid workers and peace keepers are thrust into positions of intense power, with nationality and pay brings privilege (very often locally recruited workers are paid significantly less than internationally). When submerged into the climate of disasters, overwhelming evidence has seen a number of UN workers pay local women for sex, forcefully take it, or in the latest findings, exchange it for desperately needed basic supplies.

On Wednesday, the UN responded that “The mere suggestion that somehow the UN can control the situation in a war zone and the implied conclusion that we can somehow turn this on and off, is rather simplistic and disconnected from reality of what an aid operation in an open and fierce conflict.”

Many UN staff do indeed find themselves in situations where the ugliest of humanity rears it’s head and the majority do work tirelessly to improve the situation . But it is of grave concern, at the very centre of the sector partially dedicated to eradicating inequality in all it’s forms, the UN repeatedly represses allegations. This is a phenomenon not simply of lawlessness, but impunity.

The announcement of a 24-hour hotline for female UN employees to report harassment is a step forward but not nearly enough. When the world’s most powerful force for setting the standard for the human rights of women and girls is continually found to have such a culture, we must do better or we are doomed to remain frozen in time. This involves looking outside the UN, too and at an environment where 94% of violent acts in pornography are towards women, advertisments saturated with demeaning and sexualised imagery are rife, meanwhile inequality in the workplace and all over the world prevails.

A handful of high ranking UN officials have stepped down in recent weeks, including Justin Forsyth, the secretary director of UNICEF and Luis Lourez, an assistant secretary general. Taking out singular abusers is justice, it’s empowering and influential, taking on the underlying causes and structures that allow this mentality to fester is revolutionary. The men at the centre of chaos, where gender inequality and sexual violence is rife should be our educators and never our abusers — yet the United Nations has proved it’s organisation is in fact, a large-scale and serial abuser. For, UNICEF, leading a campaign of #HerToo aimed at supporting women and girls from underdeveloped and conflicted areas of the world, the UN failures of tackling inequality and abuse within it’s own organisation leaves the spirit of the campaign sadly deceptive.

In Haiti, between 2008 and 2015, UN peace keeping forces were accused of paying for sex with over 225 local women. The UK government talked of cutting the foreign aid budget in the wake of the Oxfam allegations but little of how such incidents could and should be avoided. In 2017, nine million women and girls worldwide experienced sexual abuse and only 1% were reported.

The role of the United Nations is in part to educate and influence the international community regarding these issues, of the truths, of what really leaves women and girls vulnerable to rape, trafficking, assault, harrasment or exploitation and how we can address these issues. Yet time and time again, a number of the UN’s own employees are at the centre of allegations and what’s more, they are rarely apprehended for what are serious crimes. Anders Kompass, a former UN director for field operations in CAR, was placed under internal investigation and denounced by the UN after the organisation failed to act on a report submitted detailing alleged abuses by French troops against children as young as 9-years-old. Kompass instead leaked it to the French government.

Of course, hundreds of thousands of UN employees tirelessly work for a better world but we need to force the structures who claim to represent fundamental rights to be accountable, to implement real change or to face drastic consequences. We must tirelessly educate the children in the world through different means so they will recognise these wrongdoings as they grow older. When countless investigations are mishandled, we need independent investigative bodies. We must never allow organisations charged with protecting the rights of women and girls to repeatedly fail to hold individuals and groups of males accountable for doing the opposite.

Representative of 193 member states and millions of people; amongst other huge responsibilities like international law and peace, promoting social progress and gender equality is at its core — if we want to truly see this in reality it’s now us, the public, who must finally hold the UN to account.

Note: This article was published on the 24th February 2018, a link to a video of the interview is available here.
Additional reporting: Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Ahmad Al-Mouhmad

Since Sunday, the Syrian regime has been bombarding the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, a rebel held enclave facing what is described as one of the worst cases of violence in the history of the civil war. In less than a week, over 400 people have been killed by bombs, chemical attacks and snipers in what the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, calls ‘hell on earth’.

A United Nations Security Council vote to broker a thirty day ceasefire has been postponed several times but is currently due to take place at 1700 (GMT) on Saturday. Ahead of the vote we spoke to Majid*, a man trapped inside Douma, Eastern Ghouta.

“Right now I’m in a medical point, ambulancing the injured. Today, there was about 20 raids on Douma and also in other cities around — around 100 jet raids. Just a minute before you spoke to me was the last rocket launcher — each rocket launcher holds 40 rockets. Right now the guys are stopping fires.”

“The children who survived from the rockets are sitting in the corners scared.”

In late 2016, the Syrian regime began a similar onslaught on then rebel-held Eastern Aleppo, the country’s second largest city. A relentless and indiscriminate campaign of aerial bombardment resulted in thousands of civilian casualities before regime troops took control from the rebels.

Ghouta, now the last bastion of rebel strongholds, arguably already represents a defining moment of the Syrian civil war — when nearly 2000 people were choked to death with sarin gas in an attack by the regime in 2013. Now, between 350,000 and 450,000 civilians remain. The shops are shut, there is no food or drink and the organisations that try to cook can’t even deliver food to hungry people, explained Majid*.

“You saw what happened in other cities…Listen. Can you hear the jets?”

“Just now they bombed. Now. Now. The door opened by itself from the bombing.”

We must have a humanitarian truce, said Majid* — Ghouta is a siege not a conflict. The proposed 30-day-ceasefire would allow urgent medical and basic aid into Ghouta. But, Assad’s ally, Russia, the fifth permanent member of the security council has vetoed potential resolutions in Syria eleven times.

Eastern Ghouta, has been besieged by regime forces since 2013, the second year of the now seven year long Syrian civil war. Hundreds of thousands of civillians have been trapped with no access to basic sanitation, food or clean water. Majid* works as a volunteer rescue worker but says he can no longer reach the people desperately in need of help as he spends most of the day trapped underground sheltering from the bombs.

“Now, I would flee if all the people do… We cant handle it anymore. I can’t even reach the people in the basements to deliver food to them because of the rockets. One child ate his own faeces from hunger. It’s something the mind cant analyse.”

“The regime is bombing civillian buildings and the hospitals. An organisation belonging to UN was bombed more than ten times. I have friends in The Red Crescent that were also bombed many times — they have 3 injured volunteers, a rocket crashed their car.”

“I want you to deliver a message. If the meeting is tomorrow, urgently, urgently, urgently — truce, a humanitarian truce. We don’t want blood on either side.”

“My message is enough blood, enough. People here can’t take anymore.”

**The name Majid is false and is used to protect the identity of a man and his family who remain trapped in Eastern Ghouta.