"World Refugee Day 2017: Need for joint selfie"

"World Refugee Day 2017: Need for joint selfie"

When the refugee/migrant crisis broke out in 2015, The Guardian’s Philip Hoare reminded us of a famous Gericault’s painting “The Raft of the Medusa” under the headline “The sea does not care”. Two and a half years later, the carelessness of the sea has taken drastic proportions and spread to authorities worldwide. At the moment, one of the points where this is the most visible are the border areas between EU and the non-EU countries.

Once a sign of hope for a better future, migrants’ selfies have now turned into desperate attempt to draw attention of authorities in Europe. Selfie has become a paradigm of stranded individual who had lost any hope of achieving a dream he/she once had.

Today, a total of 11,500 refugees and migrants are stranded in the Western Balkans with little or no chance to continue their journey to a desired destination. Loss of hope is believed to reach its peak. In a bid to help them through these hard times, Info Park invested a lot of efforts in building bridges, listening to their needs and organizing different activities accordingly, varying from language classes and yoga to computer programming. Although this alleviates some of their anxieties, it cannot resolve the issue as it is only a drop in the sea of their hopelessness.

In Serbia, the state has taken everything migration-related under their control while civil society continues to provide full support these people deserve. Once in the fields, parks or informal settlements, organizations and individuals reach out to people wherever they may be.

They are dealing both with physical wounds that came as a consequence of dog bites, tasers and stick strikes as well as those that are invisible to the naked eye, caused by the global fail of humanity and countries that decided to close the doors.

Each sea is made out of drops. If state institutions, refugees/migrants and civil society organizations made more of these drops of hope together, these selfies could again become a paradigm of new life.

"We will keep on siding with hope and working towards rebuilding dreams of a better future," Info Park concluded.