“Excluded and Invisible”“Where are the playgrounds?” The caption under the winning photo of UNICEF’s “Excluded and Invisible” photography competition, held to coincide with the launch of this year’s State of the World’s Children Report, speaks volumes.The winner, 15-year-old Kham Nazmi, took the picture in Ziveh, an Iraqi/Kurdish refugee camp near Orumiyeh, in northwest Iran. The photo depicts a group of refugee children, dressed in scruffy clothes and playing with a wheelbarrow. They are looking expectantly up at the camera, as if hoping the person taking the photo can help them. Nazmi’s photo is one of 125 entered in the competition, which was organized in collaboration with UNHCR and Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon). “UNICEF strongly believes that getting children to speak up on issues affecting them is very important,” said UNICEF Officer in Charge, Jan Pieter Kleijburg. “So often children’s voices, and therefore their needs, are forgotten about or ignored. We saw this exercise as one way of making sure their voices are heard.” The entrants – aged between 10 and 18 – came from all over Iran including the provinces of Kerman, Sistan Baluchistan, Hormozgan and West Azerbaijan and two Afghan and two Iraqi refugee camps. The children were first asked to think about what it means to be excluded and invisible and then given three weeks to take photos interpreting the theme, using digital cameras supplied by UNICEF and UNHCR. “Cultural activities among nations, or what is known as dialogue among civilizations, have always been very effective; much more effective than diplomatic means,” said Seyed Mozafar Shojaee, head of International Affairs at Kanoon. “When it comes to children, this cultural transmission becomes even deeper and more effective, since children are so pure and honest.” The four judges in the competition included representatives from Kanoon, UNICEF and UNHCR, as well as a professional photographer. Sixteen winners were chosen, the top three of which won a camera each. This year’s State of the World’s Children Report focuses on children who are hardest to reach – children facing discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity and disability, children affected by HIV/AIDS, children who lack a formal identity and those who suffer child protection abuses or who are not treated as children. It underlines how these children face multiple violations of their rights and outlines the challenges faced by governments, international organizations, communities and societies in assisting them. It also argues for targeted initiatives to assist children living in marginalized communities, endorsing many of the measures proposed in the Millennium Project. The top three winners of the competition are as follows:
The following 13 children also received prizes:
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