2015: The Year of the Refugee
From debates over definitions to efforts to humanize them, 2015 was the year we tried to understand, vilify, accept, reject, and empathize with those displaced and forced to flee unspeakable violence.
by Sarah Moawad
2011 was the year that put the figure of “the protester” - the student, the worker, the ordinary citizen taking the fight for basic rights and dignity into their own hands - back on the map. That year, TIME Magazine named “The Protester” its Person of the Year - a tribute to a year of global uprisings and people power, from (unfinished) revolutions in the Arab World to the wave of demonstrations throughout Europe to Occupy Wall Street in the United States. It was a time of uncertainty and hope, defiance and repression.
If 2011 was the year of the protester, 2015 was, in many ways, the year of the refugee. The global refugee crisis - what the UN calls the worst migration crisis since World War II - has been several years in the making, finally forcing its way onto the world’s (i.e. the West’s) radar last year, with millions fleeing to and from countries throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. From the “migrant” versus “refugee” debate to the stories of refugees brought to us by Humans of New York founder Brandon Stanton, 2015 was the year we tried to understand, vilify, accept, reject, and empathize with those displaced and forced to flee unspeakable violence.
