Tuesday, April 12 in YU Great Room B saw the return of the refugee exhibit organized by Dr. Khalil “Haji” Dokhanchi.
Dokhanchi saw students from his POLS 101 class as guided tours and Red Cross members Jeff Kazel and Dan Williams.
With this year’s contribution from the Red Cross, the exhibit explores the life of a refugee seeking refuge from Afghanistan to Germany. The exhibit was showcased from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. for community and students alike.
Left to right: Dan Williams, Jeff Kazel, Dr. Khalil “Haji” Dokhanchi
The exhibit itself starts off with the Red Cross locations in Ukraine, Syria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Yemen with a statistic of how many refugees came from each country. Other statistics like the access to education and healthcare, the percentage in poverty, and even an estimate to how many people are missing.
Civilian rights were explored showing the four rules of civilians in war: civilians can’t be targeted, civilians can’t be human shields, civilians must have a safe passage to flee, and humanitarian organizations must have access to deliver aid to civilians. There was also a whole booth dedicated to the timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The guided tour started in Afghanistan with pupils picking out seven items that they want to carry with them as they seek refuge. At each station, there’s a dice to roll to determine what happened to the refugee on their journey.
A few options are being abducted into human trafficking, illegally crossing boarders to the next country, and even the extra challenge of finding out you’re pregnant.
To get to Iran, participants must cross a minefield and explore how people get aid after losing a leg or the care package for pregnant women to give birth. Booths for Iran, Turkey, Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and Germany were set up all with different information that explored the difficulties of being a refugee.
UWS student trying to juggle the balloons of refugee issues with Haji adding more
By the end of the participant journey they are invited to juggle four balloons for a minute that represent the cultural barriers, language barriers, legal barriers, and the other refugees as visual representation of the overwhelming experience of being a refugee.
The final part of the exhibit showed a map of the two-year process that it takes refugees to get into the United States.
The refugee exhibit is a semesterly event that is held by Dokhanchi’s classes, returning next fall semester.
