Name someone a ‘refugee’ and in every corner of the world, in every language it instantly marks you as a ‘zero’; something undesirable, humiliating, shorn of dignity, a title the world gives you against your will.

Against you who yesterday had a higher education, a stable job, housing, your family and friends around you, a hundred hobbies and the opportunity to travel the world. Now you’re violently assailed by something or someone, forcing you to flee across borders, from danger to more danger, toward an unpredictable and empty ‘here and now’. 

Every day you have to prove to yourself and to the new strange world around you that you are in fact still human, a human being with the right to co-exist among your hosts with dignity, safety, to be able to start again, to study, to work, to meet, to rest, to smile, to cry, to quarrel, to hug, to fall and get up again and again. The chance to integrate and live once more. 

Being branded with ‘refugee status’ is an extreme test of inner strength and self-belief, yet you have no choice but to pass it as you had no choice but to flee. To survive, no matter the cost.

The stories of these heroines in this project ‘From Life to Life’ are stories for everyone who is human. Because from one day to the next, instantly, in a heartbeat, anyone can be uprooted, forced to flee, becoming that name; a refugee.