Voices of the Voiceless - NOHA Alumni Community

14 ...C’neCt - 16 th Edition / July 2013
Recommandations:
Comics and documentaries
Naz Bagherzadeh
Cris Ntchantchou
Comics
Footnotes in Gaza
by Joe Sacco (2009,
Metropolitan
Books)
Sacco blends comics and
journalism in his telling of
the stories of two Palestinian
towns, Rafah and
Khan Younis. He interviews
local residents and
interweaves their stories
with the history of the
massacres that took place
in the towns in 1956. Sacco
also wrote a series of
comic books about a twomonth
trip to Palestine in
the early 90s, which have
been collected and published
in one volume
(Palestine, 2001).
Safe Area Goražde:
The War in Eastern
Bosnia 1992-95 by
Joe Sacco (2000, Fantagraphics)
One of the reasons Sacco’s
work is so compelling
is that he allows himself to
chronicle his own experiences
as well as those of
the people around him.
Safe Area Goražde translates
the oral history of a
range of citizens in one of
the UN ‘safe areas’ of the
mid 90s and tracks Sacco’s
own worries, too. He also
published The Fixer: A
Story from Sarajevo (2003)
and War’s End: Profiles from
Bosnia 1995-96 (2005).
Burma Chronicles
(2008, Drawn and
Quarterly)/
Chroniques birmanes
(2007, Delcourt) by
Guy Delisle
Delisle is a comic book and
animation artist married to
an MSF staff member.
Through his wife’s job, Deslisle
ends up living in Burma
with their infant son.
His book is not meant to
tell a humanitarian or political
story - instead, Delisle
gives simple but detailed
snips of his life as an expatriate.
He later wrote about
his stay in Jerusalem
through MSF (Jerusalem:
Chronicles from the Holy City,
2012/Chroniques de Jérusalem,
2011), and has also chronicled
the time he spent
working in Pyongyang for a
North Korean animation
studio (Pyongyang,
2003/2005).
Kabul Disco, Volume
1 (2009, HarperCollins)
/ Kaboul Disco
T.1. : Comment je ne
me suis pas fait kidnapper
en Afghanistan
(La boîte à bulle,
2007) by Nicolas Wild
In 2005, the author, a
young French comic book
artist finally finds a job - in
Kabul. His task is to create
a drawn adaptation of the
Afghan constitution and he
later works on the recruitment
campaign of the Afghan
army. It is a very nice
read that tells about his life
among the international
community in Kabul with a
lot of humor and irony. The
book also has a sequel
(Kabul Disco Book2: How I
Did Not Become an Opium
Addict in Afghanistan/ Kaboul
Disco T.2: Comment je ne suis
pas devenu opiomane en Afghanistan)
in which the author
recalls his work on an
awareness campaign against
opium.
Documentaries
The Fahamu Refugee
Programme (FRP) aims at
centralizing and promoting
information sharing, related
to refugee legal aid. Their
websites includes an “other
resources” page where you
can find, amongst other
things, a list of documentaries
about refugee issues
as well as links to the pages
where you can stream them
f o r f r e e . h t t p : / /
www.refugeelegalaidinform
ation.org/other-resources
Among all the films, the
following two are particularly
relevant to the topic of
this issue of C'nect.
Getting Out (Refugee
Law Project, 2011)
Getting Out is a 60 minutes
documentary produced by
the Refugee Law Project, in
collaboration with the
Ugandan Civil Society Coalition
on Human Rights &
Constitutional Law. The
film, shot in Uganda, South
Africa, Switzerland and the
UK, follows the life of 5
LGBTI individuals who
have to get out of their
countries before they can
come out safely. As they
tell their story and what
they went through before
and while trying to obtain
a refugee status, we discover
the flaws, failures
and hypocrisy of the asylum
system.
Gender Against Men
(The Refugee Law
Project, 2009)
This documentary deals
with the hidden issue of
sexual and gender based
violence against men in
the conflicts of the Great
Lakes region. It raises
many questions and asks,
among other things, why,
in the eyes of the international
community, gender
based violence remains a
women’s issue and which
could be the consequences
and whether unaddressed
legacies of sexual and gender
based violence against
men could potentially fuel
future conflicts. It also
shows how an approach of
dealing with rape that is
targeted at women only
works to the detriment of
all..
Another link to this movie
as well as to 15 other documentaries
relating to refugee
issues can be found
on the website of Forced
Migration O n l i n e
(FMO) at http://
www.forcedmigration.org/
podcasts-videos-photos/
video.
"Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it." Dag Hammarskjöld, Former UN SG