UNICEF and Lebanon’s Zakira launch their second exhibition of displaced children’s photographs

Beirut, 22 January 2014 – UNICEF and Zakira, The Image Festival Association are jointly launching the “Lahza 2” exhibition of displaced children’s photography at Al Madina Theatre in Beirut today.

“These photographs give us the extraordinary opportunity to see the lives of displaced children from the child’s viewpoint,” said UNICEF’s Representative Annamaria Laurini. “Today we should watch and listen and see through the eyes of refugee children how they see their lives, their troubles and their aspirations”.

Over a period of more than a year, five hundred children displaced from Syria in Lebanon, aged 7 to 12 years of age, were given basic training on how to use a camera and compose an image to capture a glimpse of their lives.

Zakira’s team visited 63 locations across Lebanon for a total of 238 visits to give a chance to Syrian and Palestinian refugee children to examine their new lives and portray it through their eyes. The exhibition is the result of these children’s work. 

“The images speak for themselves,” said Ramzi Haidar, founder of Zakira. ”Children have a genuine way of seeing the world, and that is why these photographs are so moving”.

On the day of the opening, a documentary on the lives of four children who took part in the project was screened and the “Lahza 2” book compiling 140 photographs taken by the children will be launched. An ongoing screening of 12 one-minute short films with children’s voices is being featured as part of the exhibition as well. The stories captured in the photographs and short movie are testimonies of these children.

The exhibition will be held from the 22^nd till the 27^th of January 2015.

Children are at the center of UNICEF call for action for basic human rights and dignity, and as Syria enters its fourth year of conflict, over 1,160.000 refugees have sought shelter in Lebanon - rendering it the country with the largest refugee population per capita in the world. 617,368 displaced children in Lebanon are exposed to hardship, fear and violence, and deprived of their normal lives.