Displaced by war, Syrian refugees are now casualties of the climate crisis. A photographer captured their resilience
Photographs by Nick Brandt
Story by Alaa Elassar, CNN
Published October 12, 2024
Displaced Syrian women and children pose for a portrait in Jordan.
Displaced Syrian women and children pose for a portrait in Jordan.
In between rows of tomato vines and potato plants sprouting out of the desperately water deprived fields of southern Jordan, a young girl dreams of school while harvesting crops alongside her mother.
Sondos Mashhoor Al-Karik is only 11 years old, but she is a Syrian refugee, a survivor of war, and now a casualty of the climate crisis. Sondos and her family are displaced nearly four times a year by the droughts in Jordan that force them to constantly relocate in pursuit of their agriculture work.
“We work 10 hours a day and earn 10 Jordanian dinars ($14). How can that be enough?” her mother, Marooba Wafdi Al-Salloum, says, adding that they have no choice but to keep Sondos out of school and working so their family can afford to survive.
The consequences of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable populations are a heartbreaking reality that weighs heavily on Nick Brandt, a fine-art photographer whose newest series, “The Echo of Our Voices,” features Sondos and her mother and 21 other Syrian refugee families who work in agriculture and have been displaced due to the droughts.
"What motivates me the most is injustice,” Brandt told CNN. “I'm deliberately going to countries that are amongst the least responsible for carbon emissions, and so the rural people living there are amongst the people who are the least responsible yet the most vulnerable.”
Jordan is the second-most water-scarce country in the world, UNICEF reports. The country is currently experiencing drought conditions, and climate change is impacting their frequency and intensity, according to the Jordan Red Crescent Society.
More than 621,000 Syrian refugees live in Jordan, where many of them work in agriculture, according to the UN Refugee Agency. About 66% of all Syrian refugees live below the poverty line, reports the European Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department.
These refugees — most of whom left Syria due to the civil war between 2013 to 2015 — are usually unable to survive without forms of humanitarian aid and have no choice but to rely on child labor, reduced food intake, and debt to manage their living conditions, according to the European Commission.
Their troubles are exacerbated by the ongoing droughts, which force them to chase scarce rainfall to find agricultural employment in regions where crops are still growing. It is an unpredictable lifestyle, where a stable home, education and health care are distant dreams.
"This will increasingly be the case all over the world as the impacts of climate change in the coming decades unfold and there are fewer and fewer places for people to call home,” Brandt said.
“It's an important reminder that every sentient being is either being subjected or is ultimately going to be subjected to the negative impacts of climate change.”
Pedestals for the unseen and unheard
Brandt spent nearly six weeks in Jordan’s striking, mountainous Wadi Rum desert shooting the portraits, which depict family members elegantly posed in intimate embraces, perched on top of boxes he set up — or pedestals, as Brandt calls them.
The pedestals, and those who stand upon them, aim skyward — “a verticality implying more sense of strength or defiance,” Brandt writes in his series’ introduction.
“They aren’t just boxes. They are pedestals for the unseen and unheard,” he told CNN over the phone from his home in California. “If you look at a statue, typically, it's some general or politician who doesn't deserve to be put up on a pedestal for all the things they may have done. But here are these people who have lived and are living really hard lives, who deserve for the world to hear their stories. They deserve to be seen.”
Brandt strikes a flawless balance when bringing together harsh and soft elements. In this case, the delicate reunion between the roughness of the desert — and the refugees’ stories — with the warmth of family. The refugees come alive through his photos; their physical connections emanate affection, and in the eyes of the children are crystal-clear dreams. Some of the women look straight into the camera, with expressions that scream resilience.
“You might say that the topic is depressing, but to me, what we're doing is showing that in the face of adversity, there is this strength and connection. Yes, these people are living incredibly hard lives, but through that, there is still this connection,” Brandt explained.
“When all else is lost, you still have each other.”
The photographer initially met the families through Lubna Yaseen Al Ajeeb, who served as a researcher and coordinator on the photography project. Al Ajeeb, who has worked with Syrian refugee in Jordan for the past 10 years, assisted in identifying and interviewing families for the series.
“When Nick Brandt first told me about the project over the phone, I cried,” Al Ajeeb told CNN. “I felt the importance of this project from the first moment. These pictures are real, and I believe they will shed light on the people who are now suffering greatly from the challenges of climate change.”
Brandt first spent two weeks meeting and building relationships with the refugees where they lived — often inside their tents in camps in small, remote villages near the fields they were working. Then over the course of six weeks, he photographed 21 families consisting of over 170 family members.
The photos show a variety of touching moments between the families: siblings hugging each other, a husband placing his head on his wife's shoulder, a little girl looking into the distance while her father hugs her, and elderly people surrounded by their sons, daughters and grandchildren.
Brandt had to navigate the many natural elements of the desert that proved challenging, such as sandstorms and the icy winter weather. He had initially intended to photograph the project during the wettest time of year so the clouds would play a visual element, but "per climate change, it barely rained," he said.
He also used the elements to his advantage, shooting some of the photographs solely with the moonlight, offering a sense of quiet repose compared to the more defiant poses of the daylight shots.
Brandt’s favorite photos, however, are the ones with the elder women — the matriarchs — who have become the providers of their families. Before and after grueling hours in the fields, they are with the children at home, building as much stability and fostering as much love as their lives can afford them.
“They are the queens of those families. I've deliberately placed F’taim and Shaila in two of the photographs at the center of big family photographs. For me, they are the central concept — the strength that is on their faces,” Brandt said. “It wasn't like I consciously was trying to make the women seem stronger. They just are.”
In a world that so frequently dehumanizes Arabs, especially Arab women who fall victim to stereotypical depictions of oppressed, voiceless beings, Brandt has made an effort to give these women a platform to reclaim their power.
"It was great to see how delighted they were to be photographed with respect and dignity,” Brandt said. “Every time I do one of these chapters, one of the most moving things that I hear at the end of the shoot is people will say: 'Thank you for hearing us. Thank you for hearing our stories.’
“And that is everything, because that is the whole point.”
‘This isn’t a life meant for children’
Sondos has never stepped foot inside a classroom. She doesn’t know how to read or write, and when she isn’t in the fields working with her mother, she’s at home helping take care of her three younger brothers.
“We came here, and in the first year, my husband had an accident,” her mother said. “We had little money. I begged for help and eventually paid off the debts. We have three (younger) children. They got sick, and hospital bills were expensive. I still struggle with this. He can't work anymore and stays home with the kids."
Ever since his accident, his wife and daughter have been the sole providers of the family.
Nine other children, whose ages range between 11 to 17, who were photographed in the project work in the fields with their parents and do not attend school.
“All the children told me they had a dream in their hearts to go to school,” Al Ajeeb said. “They don’t know what school looks like, but they know they wish to be there. They know that they learn and play, not work. For most children, school seems hard, but for these children, school means a much more beautiful life than the one they’re living.”
It isn’t an uncommon story, and one mentioned by nearly all the families photographed, including F’taim Almahmood, a 54-year-old Syrian refugee who was featured with her eight children.
“If we were in one place, we could put the kids in school. But the farms are what drive us,” Almahmood said. “One month we work, the next we have no work. Then we have to move somewhere else for work.”
Shaila, another refugee who was photographed with her five children, said that their lives in Syria looked very different.
“Our children went to school, our husbands worked, and we weren't struggling like this. We had our own land and farms,” Shaila said, reminiscing of their old life in Syria that was robbed from them. “We want (our children) to be free from displacement and wars, where they can attend school. I hope they find stability and comfort, away from working on farms. We want them to have a better life.”
A message to the world
At least 300,000 Syrian civilians have been killed since the country's civil war began in 2011, according to the United Nations. Events quickly escalated, shattering the lives of millions, destroying cities, straining global politics, and spurring diplomatic efforts that continued to be constantly questioned.
When they speak of their lives in Syria, their aching nostalgia for home pierces their every word. Although they worked on farms there, too, they say, most had their own land, houses and the constant presence of their entire families.
“Home is everything. Home is like having your mother and father in a house with us and our kids,” Shaila said. “Here is our second home, but we miss Syria and cry for it.”
When people view these photographs, Brandt hopes they can hear the message he is trying to send. For those looking into the eyes of these refugees from their own comfortable and privileged lives, this project is a warning.
"If you just look around you and accept the science, you’ll see the level of increasing destruction from climate change. How could you not be increasingly daily distressed by what you see?” Brandt said. “At some point, all of us will be impacted, one way or another.”
Brandt uses his photography as one of his chosen forms of activism. “The Echo of Our Voices” is the fourth chapter in his project “The Day May Break,” which examines the impact of environmental destruction and climate breakdown for both the most vulnerable people and animals on the planet.
“It is better to be angry and active than angry and passive. It prevents you from slipping into despair. By telling stories through my pictures, it motivates me,” he said. “I think any of us, all of us, can do something. It doesn't matter how small or how large, but millions of small actions can accumulate in significance.”
Mass displacements from climate change-linked events are expected to become more common as the planet heats up. More than 1 billion people living in countries that are unlikely to be able to adapt to the extreme weather events are at risk of being forced from their homes by 2050, the Ecological Threat Register, conducted by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) projected in a 2020 report.
As the planet heats up from humans burning fossil fuels, droughts are becoming more frequent, intense, and longer lasting globally. And when soil dries out, it’s not only unfit for farming — it’s also less able to absorb rain when it does fall, increasing the chances of flooding when heavy rain hits.
Other extreme weather events worsened by climate change are also displacing communities. Heat waves are becoming so intense in parts of India that people have to move away during the hottest summer months. The Middle East has always dealt with extreme heat, but temperatures there are rising, too, exacerbating droughts and pushing human survivability to the limit, especially for those who work outdoors. In the Pacific, sea level rise threatens the future of entire island nations.
The data is distressing, and the predictions for what the world will look like unless immediate and radical action is taken is bleak. But Brandt refuses to give up.
“I would not be making this work if I didn't believe there was hope.”
An exhibition of “The Echo of Our Voices,” along with “SINK / RISE: The Day May Break, Chapter Three,” is currently at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles until November 9. “The Echo of Our Voices” was partly funded by Intesa Sanpaolo’s Gallerie d’Italia in Turin, Italy.
