Art is helping refugees and locals understand each other.

War and continuous conflict in countries like Afghanistan has forced many people to flee their homeland, with many ending up in Indonesia as refugees. 

Yet even after enduring a perilous journey to reach new shores, refugees still suffer with no access to basic human rights, including education and employment.  

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According to Akino Tahir, a senior researcher at the Resilience Development Initiative Urban Refugee Research Group (RDI UREF), there were 14,000 refugees in Indonesia in 2021. Many of them live in a state of mental or emotional strain because they have to wait years for confirmation of resettlement without any certainty. Akino also shared that 16 refugees across Indonesia had attempted suicide because of the stress and strain of adjusting and building a life here. 

RDI UREF is a research group focusing on urban refugees to raise public awareness and discourse on refugees.

Safe in art

To deal with such psychological challenges, some refugees express their emotional experience in visual form, including through paintings, drawings and handicraft. RDI UREF exhibited some of these creations in its exhibition titled Let’s Walk My Journey.

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