English ppc

Author: Vincent Tremeau

Theme: Venezuelan refugees
Place: Cucuta, Colombia
Date: 21 May 2019
The picture I choose is showing Venezuelans refugees crossing a river. This picture has
been taken by Vincent Tremeau, for the UNHCR on the 21 May 2019. These refug ees are
crossing a river to leave their country and to reach Colombia, in the present case the city of
Cucuta. We can see that they are many, with more or less belongings with them. So, we can
conclude that some of them have planned to live elsewhere for an undefined period.
Nevertheless, their belongings seem to be only the essential because they can carry their
belongings with their arms. Moreover, their suitcase is just a fabric bag. That reveals their
poverty, increased by their clothes, very simple. Some of them don’t even have shoes and
some of them are topless to cross the river. In order to cross the river, we can easily
understand they do not have many choices: the homemade bridge or the river. On the
bridge, we can see the people who have belongings or those who might be physically fragile.
Contrary to those who walk in the river, looking stronger physically excepting the people in
the background, who may be too far from this bridge compared to the crowd present. The
bridge on the foreground symbolise all the risks the refugees are ready to take. The children
on the other side of the bridge may suffer and might catch diseases due to their thinness. I
find this picture really good because the colours are expressing the way how refugees see
the life: dark and tough. Furthermore, this photo shows us the incredible number of refugees,
in 2018 they were more than 25 million worldwide and over 4 million only from Venezuela.
For me, the refugees will massively arrive in Colombia, tired despite all the hope they have.
Then, they may try to recover a normal life, including a home, a job and if they are lucky,
enough money to eat every day. Before all those steps they may live outside or in
immigration centre or in the best of case in an inhabitant’s home. And if, their life is going
worthy, they may come back into their origin country, and spend a life into poverty, except if
they prefer to try other countries, hoping for a decent life. My thoughts about this is that you
can’t allow 4 million people to leave your country without doing anything for them. Venezuela
is knowing one of its worth moment, but the government needs to act. And in the possible
case where the state doesn’t move in the country, the neighbour countries should act to
protect their refugees as much as their inhabitants. This is the best issue they have if they
want to develop the level of life and to avoid death.