Dawit prepares to say goodbye to his mother as he will leave to start his new life in Canada next week. The refugee fled to Ethiopia from Eritrea six years ago. He had not been able to see his mother since leaving his home but when he got the news that he will finally be resettling to Canada his mother had to see him one last time.
The reunion is bittersweet as she knows it will be the last time she will see him for a long time. "I miss him so much but knowing that he will finally be able to start his new life in Canada brings me happiness. It is like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders," she says.
Diaraye Conde sits in a migrant reception center with her four children in Nouakchott, Mauritania. Originally from Guinea, she came to Mauritania five months ago with her husband who later fell ill and died. Devastated, Diaraye and her family are now stranded in Mauritania with no idea where to go as her husband hand made all of the arrangements.
Vusal points to the shrapnel marks scattered around his bedroom walls in Barda, Azerbaijan. The 15-year-old teenager lives near the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces. His parents originated from the now occupied area of Lachin decades ago during the height of the conflict but he has only known this damaged home his whole life.
A young boy wades through the river water on his way to school in Southern Ethiopia. Several villages have been impacted by recent flooding causing displacement as well as closing down public buildings such as schools and health clinics.
Yereye is among several people who have been recently displaced by seasonal floodings in their village in the Somali region of Ethiopia. In recent years, she recalls her village being flooded and displaced on three occasions, with each time having to return to the same area until water levels go down and they can return to rebuild their homes.
Several Cambodians are brought back to Cambodia after having crossed the Thai border illegally. Over 10% of Cambodia's population work inside of Thailand where wages are nearly three times higher for comparable work resulting in several finding ways to migrate for work, through regular means or otherwise.
A Syrian woman looks out towards the Swiss Alps for the first time while on her flight to Toronto. She is among many Syrians who were resettled into Canada in 2015.
The skinny island of Majuro can be as thin as 100 meters in certain areas, and only a few meters above sea level, making it highly vulnerable to strong waves crashing onto its shores. The Marshall Islands are extremely susceptible to climate change as its coastline continues to erode over the decades.
A young South Sudanese boy exits the United Nations protected IDP in Bentiu while others hang their laundry on the razor wire.
Ru is a former Cambodian fisherman. Originally from a small town near Siem Reap, he and a number of other men ventured into Thailand looking for work and were eventually trafficking onto fishing boats where they were forced to work for over six years as slaves. He has a number of tattoos, many of which he does not full understand their meaning. The tattoo on his chest is inspired by a similar design that one of his captors, the ship captain, had which he liked. Tattooing is an ancient part of Khmer culture. Magical tattoos, known as sok ya, are believed to protect the wearer from anything from bad luck to physical harm.
Migrant workers harvest rubber late a night at natural rubber plantation in Myanmar. Many workers prefer to work at night because of the cooler air but are at more risk to being bitten by mosquitoes. Several people migrate for work due to higher wages and are often vulnerable to diseases such as Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is prevalent on many plantations.
Hundreds of Syrian refugees line up at a soup kitchen in Gaziantep, Turkey. For many Syrian refugees, this is the only meal they recieve in the day.
Children play with their newly received mattresses during a distribution of relief items in Lahij governorate, Yemen.
Detora and her family has lived on the small island of Chuuk for her whole life and seen her fair share of powerful storms and typhoons. This all changed when the Micronesian island of 6,000 was severely hit by a typhoon in 2015, which destroyed hundreds of homes across multiple islands in the region including hers.
13 year old Mary lives with her mother Hannatu in Maiduguri. When she was 10 years old her village was attacked by Boko Haram and ended up being captured by them. She spent an entire month under their captivity where she was often beaten. She was lucky enough to escape with the help of another woman and later reunited with her family in Maiduguri.
A house can be seen flipped over after being ripped in half in an upper-class residential area of Abaco. Two months following the landfall of a powerful category 5 hurricane in the Bahamas in late September 2019, entire neighborhoods are still destroyed in affected areas. As people begin the slow process of rebuilding an estimated 5,700 people continued to be displaced within the Bahamas.
Mustapha is one of the many Somali refugees living in Indonesia. Having fled death threats in Mogadishu, he smuggled his way into Indonesia a year ago where he joins others awaiting to find a new home.
Sifa is one of the 1,500 residents at the Kibabi IDP camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She has been at the camp since it first opened in 2012 when she fled her village which is a mere 30km away. Her village was attacked by the Mai-Mai (a local militia) and she lost her husband and two children. Speaking about the ordeal brings her to tears but she goes on to explain that even though her village is still not safe to return that she would refuse to go back even if it was safe. For Sifa the memories of losing her family is too much to bear to ever go back.