Al Jazeera Correspondent

Filmmaker: Abdullah Chhadeh The ongoing conflict in Syria has forced not only Syrians, but Iraqis and Palestinian refugees out of the country and into Lebanon in search of safety. Sitting in a Beirut cafe, Syrian screenwriter Najeeb Nseir is unable to accept being labelled a refugee. "I tell people I'm a tourist," he says. "The idea of the refugee is humiliating ... seeking refuge in Arab countries is the humiliating thing." He remembers a time when Syria was home to refugees from around the Middle East but says "no one had imagined Syrians would become refugees." The massive influx of millions of refugees into Europe in 2015 sparked a global rise in far-right anti-immigration movements, claiming to fight for a way of life they believe to be under threat. Lebanon has not been immune to that trend, meaning the Lebanese perspective is increasingly one of 'Lebanese first'. "Beirut's no longer a welcoming city," says Palestinian filmmaker Fajr Yacoub, who confesses he copes with displacement "by making films and writing novels." His parents fled Haifa in 1948 and he grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp Syria. He's now managing to survive as a fiction and documentary filmmaker and while his work has won recognition, he laments, "once it [Beirut] ignited creativity of certain Palestinian artists." War, conflict and displacement force people like Fajr to reimagine their notion of 'homeland'. Unlike Syrians and Iraqi refugees who may eventually return home, "Palestinians will always be refugees" because "Palestine doesn't exist," says Fajr. Forced to accept that he'll never return to the Palestine of his parents, he maintains that "a homeland is no longer defined by geographical borders or a place where my parents lived, my father grew up or my granddad played ... you take [it] with you wherever you go." Iraqi visual artist Salam Omar has also let go of a physical concept of a homeland. "I've invented a new homeland in my imagination," explains Salam. "Now, my homeland is my new and old friends in Beirut or in exile." Omar escaped the sectarian fighting in post-invasion Iraq and hoped to make Syria his permanent home. "It was very hard to leave my house in Syria because ... the dream was big," says the teary-eyed 60-year old. "I arranged my paintings and created an art gallery at home. I dreamt of inviting my friends and Arab artists." For Omar, emigrating a second time has been tougher than leaving Iraq, but he does find artistic expression, experimenting with silk-screen designs on urban building facades. He believes artists have a duty to record and archive the events around them. Connecting to others around the world in these modern times is easy, so "I'm not isolated from the world". In the 1970s and 1980s, Lebanon and Beirut became bywords for chaos and destruction. It's often been said that Lebanon is a battleground for other countries' proxy wars - and according to the latest United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures, one in four people living in Lebanon today is a Syrian refugee. Around 45,000 Palestinians from Syria have now sought refuge in Lebanon, joining the estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees already living in the country. UNHCR says Iraqi refugees in Lebanon are just under 30,000. The tensions are real, as well as the pressure on the infrastructure of housing, water, education and health in a small country barely able to provide for its five million citizens. Since the making of this film, Fajr Yacoub has moved from Beirut to Sweden, making him a refugee thrice over. He's taking Swedish-language classes and is due to become a Swedish citizen in 10 months. More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

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Filmmaker: Rania Rafei In 2015, the World Health Organisation published 'Healthy Ageing', its assessment of and vision for the elderly, between now and the year 2030. It talks about retirement ideally being "the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age". It defines functional ability as "having the capabilities that enable all people to be and do what they have reason to value". The five men and women from Morocco and Lebanon in this film have met both of these challenges head on – and in quite different but inspiring ways. When older people in the Arab world approach retirement, their greatest worries are often financial - but also to do with exactly what they'll do with their time once they stop working. Their image of retirement is often as some kind of death sentence, a period of inertia, boredom, physical weakness and sometimes depression. But as people in many parts of the world are now living longer, is this stereotype starting to change? For the five retirees in A New Lease Of Life, life after work is all about continuing to be mentally and physically able, of devoting their life to relationships, to the arts – and to their own health and well-being. "Age isn't how old you are. It's about being incapable. It's when the mind and body slow down," says retired paediatrician Abdulwahab Al-Amin. Post-retirement culture in the Arab world poorly developed, leaving many people confused about how to lead their later lives. Having an unstructured schedule can have an emotional impact – so finding a hobby can be essential to 'healthy ageing'. "A lot of people complain about retirement," says Al-Amin. "They don't have any hobbies or duties because their kids have grown up … you'd find them complaining about having nothing to do". By contrast, Al-Amin now spends his time writing and publishing his memoirs, unpacking life events going back to his first love and to the Lebanese civil war. All five characters are breaking the mould in different ways. Some have had high profile jobs but are now using their time to explore and rediscover some of the life-long passions they never had time for while working. Firyal Lathgi is a retired school administrator who used to paint when she was young but didn't pursue it. "I didn't take it seriously" she says. Then her husband persuaded her to pick it up again. "I eventually decided to try. I had nothing to lose". Spending three to four hours a day painting, she now produces around 45 paintings a year and stages local exhibitions. Spending years working his way up the ranks of the Lebanese Army, retired officer Ahmed Onaisi has also taken up painting. "When I retired I became free" he says. To him freedom meant having the time to prioritise his health and putting painting at the centre of his life. "A hobby becomes more than just a hobby. It becomes a necessity." Similarly, Abdulwahab Baradah had let his music lapse but has now taken it up again. He fell ill and this motivated him to find a music teacher. Now he devotes all this spare time to playing the oud and performing with a choir. Abulsalam Sulaiman lives deep in the Moroccan countryside and used to work in tourism. When the work dried up, he took up the flute and now plays solo as well as in a band - and his music is a big part of his spiritual life. "All I can think about is the flute", he says. "It helps me in reverence to God". All five of these inspiring characters share Ahmed Onaisi's conviction that "a retiree who has no hobby lives a huge void as if he's counting the days until he dies" – and collectively defy retirement and old age by pursuing passions that have given them all a new lease of life. More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The east of Australia is in the grip of drought. Parts of the states of New South Wales and Victoria received virtually no rain at all over the Australian winter, and that lack of rain came after more than a year of much-dryer-than-average conditions. Farmers across the country are struggling to grow crops and feed their animals. "The grind of a drought gets to you. You get a 50 kilometre per hour wind blowing in your face all day and there's a bit of dust mixed through it and you've still got to feed your stock and that .... It's just the fact that you're out there every day and things are going backwards not forwards," says sheep and cattle farmer Wayne Dunford. Agriculture contributes three percent to Australia's gross domestic product (GDP). The industry is worth more $40bn a year and directly employs 300,000 people. It also has a unique place in the Australian psyche - and in politics. "This is a way of life that is important to Australia's future. And as a result of that I think that means there's a special responsibility here," says Prime Minister Scott Morrison. "I'll make sure that way of life continues to be preserved." The way colonial settlers tamed a rugged land to produce crops and graze animals is part of Australia's history and has become part of its self-identity. Even though most Australians live in cities, they have a strong affinity with what's known as 'the bush'; and have sympathy for those growing their food there. Linda Botterill is a political scientist who has worked in the offices of two government ministers for agriculture. She says the political attachment to farming is rooted in Australians' cultural affinity with those who work the land. "Drought makes great television. And in Australia - visually - our droughts are really confronting. So people in the city who don't necessarily understand the economics of agriculture - who have this deep cultural sympathy for farmers - want their governments to act." Australia's national and state governments have just announced an aid package worth almost $2bn for farmers hit by drought. But what used to be an uncontroversial government expenditure is now, for the first time, attracting critical eyes. Disapproving economists say that aid packages unlike any in other industries distort the agriculture industry. They also claim subsidies keep uneconomic farms alive artificially and discourage necessary prudence and innovation. "If you want to be in agriculture then you've got to take the good and the bad times," says Melbourne-based economist John Freebairn. "I feel sympathy for them. But ... farmers voluntarily choose farming .... From the perspective of individual farmers and of the nation, we would want them to be involved in farming if on average the money they make during the good times will carry them through the bad times. If the farmer can't do that and the country can't do that, then we're better off shifting those people to some other activity," he says. "Why subsidise farming but not tourism or manufacturing or restaurants? ... You're really taking resources away from one side of the economy ... to subsidise the agricultural sector. Why would you want a bigger agricultural sector and a smaller services and manufacturing sector?" As eastern Australia is in the grip of drought, what is the best solution for the country and its farmers? Talk to Al Jazeera travelled to inland New South Wales to talk to farmers about how bad this drought has been and to those who are now questioning financial help for farmers. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmakers: Heba Bourini and Mohammad Jameel Born to affluent parents in Palestine under the British mandate in 1935, Edward W Said devoted his adult life to raising awareness of the Palestinian cause on the world stage. A literature professor at Columbia University and celebrated intellectual, "he was a scholar and an ordinary man's person," according to the Independent's Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk. A fatal diagnosis with leukaemia in 1991 prompted him to start working on Out of Place: A Memoir, a coming-of-age story of exile and a celebration of his irrecoverable past. In this masterpiece, Said rediscovers the lost Arab world of his early years in Palestine, as well as in Lebanon and Egypt. Raised as a Protestant in a predominately Eastern Orthodox community in Jerusalem, he realised early in life that he had something of a split identity. His first name was British, his last name Arabic and he carried an American passport through his father's US army service in the first world war. Describing her English faculty colleague's seminal work, Gauri Viswanathan says, "He saw being out of place as a psychological state of things … as a physical characterisation. He saw out of place as also a moving reflection on being out of place - the place being Palestine." While living and working in pro-Israeli New York City, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War marked a defining point in his life. The war changed the map of the Middle East and has affected the path to Arab-Israeli peace until today because of the way it redrew borders, implemented Israel's territorial claims and confirmed its military dominance in the region. "I was no longer the same person after 1967", wrote Said. "The shock of that war drove me back to where it had all started, the struggle over Palestine." At Columbia University, Said's preoccupation with the Arab world began to show in his published work, as he produced one of the most significant books of the 20th century. Orientalism challenged western preconceptions about the 'other', arguing it saw it as exotic, backward, uncivilised and sometimes dangerous. The book effectively gave birth to the academic discipline of post-colonial studies. Said became something of a superstar in some academic circles and began trying to change the stereotype of Palestine and the Palestinians among Americans - and was also elected to the Palestine National Council, the governing body of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). But he predictably fell foul of the US pro-Israel lobby and a far-right Jewish magazine labelled him the 'professor of terror'. Said was an accomplished musician and pianist and as his health failed in the late 1990s, he took a step away from politics and devoted the last years of his life to music, seeing it as a universal language. He wanted to break down barriers and find a common language between Israelis and Arabs - and so co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim. This disappointed some of his peers who were quick to point out that this meant what they saw as normalisation with a coloniser. "I reminded him that he taught us not to separate art and music from politics," says Lebanese writer Samah Idriss. Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi captures the essence and impact of his friend and colleague: "With the death of Edward Said we immigrant intellectuals ceased to be immigrant and became native to a new organicity. We are the fulfilments of his battles. He theorised himself to be out of place so timely and so punctiliously, so that after him we are no longer out of place, at home where ever we can hang our hat and say no to power … "We are all free-floating. Said was very site specific about Palestine - and thereby he made the Palestinian predicament a metaphysical allegory, and he grounded it in the physical agony and heroism of his people… The new intellectual organicity that Said enabled requires that you roll up your sleeves, get down and dirty, so that in the midst of chaos you can seek solace, of darkness, light, of despair, hope." More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

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Filmmaker: Bahiya Namour Fifty years ago, United States Senator Robert F Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just moments after he'd won California's Democratic presidential primary. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, was arrested at the scene of the shooting in what the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) thought was an open-and-shut case. Sirhan was tried and jailed for Robert Kennedy's murder. But since the 1970s, there have been calls for a new investigation into the assassination, based on differing witness accounts, the number of shots fired and distance of Sirhan from Kennedy when he fired. "We're trying to prove there was a travesty of justice in 1969 at Sirhan's trial. We're trying to prove that there was no way that he could have shot the senator, let alone have killed the senator," says Laurie Dusek, a member of Sirhan's defence team. Kennedy's wounds suggest his assassin - or assassins - stood behind him, but eyewitnesses place Sirhan about a metre away and almost in front of him. This has led to suggestions that a second gunman may have fired the fatal shot, a theory supported by Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, Thomas Noguchi, who stated in his report that the shot that killed Kennedy was fired at the point-blank range next to his right ear. "The only way to explain this that there was a second gunman in a position behind Kennedy, but the prosecution never proved that Sirhan was behind Kennedy or was able to shoot him point blank," says eyewitness Paul Schrade. Witness accounts and more recent forensic analysis support the view that more bullets were fired at the scene than Sirhan could have had in his gun. Sirhan's .22 Iver-Johnson revolver could only hold eight bullets, yet as many as 13 shots may have been fired at the scene. Two FBI investigators who attended the crime scene right after the assassination stated that they had discovered two bullets in a door frame - bullets that were not mentioned in the LAPD's report. "If a second gun is not firing, there cannot be any bullet holes in the wooden door frames," explains William Klaber, a journalist and writer who has studied the case extensively. "So the police take those door frames down and they bring them to the police station to do work on them. It turns out these bullets represent too many bullets. Sirhan's gun holds eight bullets." Robert Kennedy's death, like the 1963 assassination of his older brother, President John F Kennedy, has been the subject of many conspiracy theories. One suggests that if Bobby were ever elected president, it's almost certain he would have ordered a fresh investigation into his brother's assassination, unconvinced as he was by the official version in the Warren Commission report. Other theories include had Robert Kennedy been elected president, he would have taken steps to end the war in Vietnam. RFK was a principled politician, a New York senator who cared about poverty in the south and racial segregation everywhere. His ideals of a more equal society were never realised but the scale of grief following his death showed how much people appreciated him. After his body had been flown from California to New York, it was put on board a train to Washington, DC for burial next to his brother John at Arlington National Cemetery - and the railway line was lined with millions of mourners. The journey, however, to establish clearly how he died is still incomplete. More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

A look at how Soviet rule has shaped present-day Georgia while exploring if it was a union of equals or a military and cultural occupation by Russia. Journalist Tamila Varshalomidze grew up in Georgia after the downfall of the Soviet Union, but she is very aware of how the USSR's influence has affected her life, her family and community and her country. In 1937, during Stalin's "Great Terror," her great great grandfather, a wealthy peasant, was purged. In the middle of the night, someone knocked on his door; he was told to get dressed and leave with the authorities. His family never saw him again. "It has been 80 years ... but I think that finding the truth still matters. I feel it helps us to understand why and how we were controlled as a country," says Tamila. "After almost 30 years of independence, the USSR is still with us and I believe we cannot have a future before we have dealt with this past." Tamila sets out to explore her family's history and how Soviet rule has shaped present-day Georgia. Was it a union of equals or a military and cultural occupation by Russia? And how does the existence of Soviet-era monuments and buildings continue to dominate life in the former Soviet republic? She also examines the impact of this legacy on the psyche of those who live in their shadows, and asks why her fellow Georgians actively avoid dealing with their Soviet past? "One of the means to show the power of the state has always been architecture, be it pyramids or baroque palaces," Georgian architect and urban planner, Irakli Zhvania says. "It was always the means to show your own people how powerful you are, to show them that they are small, they are little and they should be afraid of the state." These structures, which Tamila refers to as the "Soviet scar", are a constant reminder of Georgia's long, painful struggle for independence. For others, they are simply a fact of daily life. While some buildings reveal a kind of Soviet grandeur, many, like the "Khrushchev" residence blocks, named after the Soviet leader's promise of housing for the masses, are an outward symbol of hard times and oppression. Poorly made, limited in functionality and lacking in design, the buildings are nonetheless home to many Georgians, including Tamila's parents. "I think we actively avoid dealing with our past," she says. "This has always been the mindset of my parents' generation. They were born into a Soviet Union which was against people asking questions and curiosity got you into trouble." In The Soviet Scar, Tamila looks into Georgia's complex past to find out if there might be a way to heal the collective memory of pain. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

There are 68.5 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Of these, 25.4 million are refugees, and 68 percent of all the refugees come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia. Even though they are hosted by several countries, many of them aim for one final destination: Europe. The European Union declared a "refugee crisis" in 2015, and the "crisis" intensified as thousands kept pouring into the continent. EU member states have failed to agree on a solution with increased political tension as a result. But whose fault is this crisis? And are all countries in the world - all of them - doing enough to ease the situation, or are only a few carrying the burden? Amin Awad, the director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Bureau of the UNHCR, talks to Al Jazeera. "The international community have paid, to a certain extent, generously for the Syria situation ... Traditional donors like the European Union, the EU member states ... The Arab world, thanks to Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, plus Turkey, have received six million refugees, and others have contributed to the Syria cause," says Awad. "But we also have Iraq, we have Libya and we have Yemen. We have many other crises in Africa that are also facing problems and a shortage of funding. Not all funding appeals from the UN are met." Asked about the prospect of a central processing centre for migrants hoping to start a new life in Europe, located somewhere strategic in Africa, such as Morocco which had been formerly proposed, Awad sees the move as a potentially positive action as opposed to one which sees Europe shirking its responsibilities. "I think what the Europeans are trying to do is to share the burden of the hundreds of thousands - or millions - that have crossed over in the last few years," he says. "The way out of this [multiple transit centres in North Africa] is robust policies to govern the assistance given by sub-Sahara and North Africa in order to stabilise this population." "The second thing is," continues Awad, "the world has to come up with a comprehensive system to fight and contain smuggling and trafficking. Smugglers and traffickers are coordinating as gangs with those who are trading in arms and in drugs. Those people are working in the smuggling and trafficking of human beings share intelligence, resources, they exchange heavy weapons, and they are bent on controlling those three things: drugs, people and weapons. This is very destabilising for the world at large. And this is billions of dollars of trade." "If the world does not come up with a mechanism to control this and put it as one of the most important agenda items today to the top of the world agenda, the situation will get worse and worse." According to Awad, "there is a humanitarian disaster in the making [in Yemen]. The world is watching this. And one day the world will wake up and find out that we have gone through one of the worst famine crises of our time. The world has to act - not one region or another - internationally to contain this problem, to reverse the situation. There is a need for huge humanitarian intervention." "That war has to stop. Saudi Arabia and other countries have to come to the assistance of the Yemeni people now. What is being done now is not enough." When asked about countries that may not contribute as generously as others are perceived to, Awad says there are many reasons why this occurs, not least of which is the way GDP is distributed for each respective world nation; but there could be a more fair way forward. "There ought to be a new order to make these contributions more equitable," he says. "The number of countries that contribute, for example, to these crises is not more than 15. The countries that are capable and able of contributing are more than 15. So, it is left to a very small number of countries that cannot meet the demand of humanity. And the demands are increasing every year." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmaker: Mostafa Bouazzaoui For almost his whole political career, Abraham Serfaty was a thorn on the side of authorities in Rabat, both during the days of French rule and later, under the reign of King Hassan II. Described by his closest supporters as "the Moroccan Mandela", Serfaty endured 17 years of imprisonment, torture and 13 years of exile for his political views, including his opposition to Morocco's position on Western Sahara. Part of the minority Jewish population in Morocco, he never embraced Zionism. After the 1967 war, he distanced himself from Israel and became a vocal advocate for the Palestinian resistance movement, a burning issue that dominated discussion on Arab streets at the time. Serfaty once famously told the media: "Conveying the image of a democratic Israel is a fantasy. You cannot be a democrat while oppressing another people. Zionism goes against democracy. I was 10 in 1936, when my father told me at the synagogue that 'Zionism goes against our religion.'" His unique identity allowed him to break taboos and inspire others, according to those who met him. "He established a new concept of the Arab Jew who didn't renounce any element of his origins as a Moroccan and an Arab Jew," explains university teacher Michelle Fay. "One can be a hundred percent Jewish and a hundred percent anti-Zionist." Together with Abdellatif Laabi, Serfaty developed an artistic journal called "Souffles", meaning "Breaths". Printed in Arabic and French, it was a creative space for political expression that its authors felt had been silenced for so long by politicians and the monarchy. "It gave a new orientation to both journalism and creativity in an era that was giving birth to new ideas in Morocco, Palestine and the world," says Noureddine Saoudi, a former prisoner and teacher. As a champion of universal human rights and democratic principles, Serfaty sits alongside the likes of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King and Patrice Lumumba. A product of his environment, he belonged to the freethinking era of the 1960s and 70s; and of the post-independence period when many Arab countries were freed from colonial rule. There was a global movement to end authoritarian rule, war, poverty, racism and the nuclear threat in which primarily young people inspired by left-wing Marxist ideology, saw spreading political awareness as a duty. It's ironical, on reflection, that several figures who wrestled their countries away from foreign influence later used oppressive styles of government against their own people - like Hafez al-Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Years after Abraham Serfaty's death in 2010, the Arab Middle East is still grappling with many of the major issues that preoccupied him - searching for forms of government acceptable to people and politicians, free from outside influence, without media restrictions or powerful instruments of state. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Despite an uneven global economic recovery since the 2008 financial crisis, adequate and affordable housing is increasingly out of reach to hundreds of millions of people, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, Leilani Farha. In her latest report on global housing need, Farha wrote that the world's money markets have priced people out of cities, with speculators and investors treating housing as a "place to park capital". Farha, who presented her findings before the Human Rights Council in Geneva in March 2017, said that "housing has lost its social function and is seen instead as a vehicle for wealth and asset growth. It has become a financial commodity, robbed of its connection to community, dignity and the idea of home." Leilani Farha spoke to Al Jazeera about the growing global housing crisis and the steep challenges ahead for the more than one billion people who do not have adequate housing. At an estimated global net worth of $163 trillion, the residential real estate market is equivalent to more than twice the world's total economy and dwarfs the approximate seven-trillion-dollar-value of all the gold ever mined, Farha told Al Jazeera. Housing is viewed as a way to "grow wealth and that has changed the way in which housing operates", she said. "It means ... you have investors, private equity firms, vulture funds, buying up housing. Who is their principle concern? It's their investor and if they're using housing to satisfy their investor interests, what do they have to do with that housing if it's rental housing? It's obvious, they have to increase the rents." The right to adequate housing is enshrined in Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration for Human Rights, which states that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care." Housing "has tentacles into every other human right, practically. Housing is not just about four walls and a roof [but] about living in a place where you have peace, security and most importantly, dignity. And once you start playing with the idea of dignity, you can imagine what that means. It means living in a place with proper sanitation and basic services ... toilets, running water." Adequate housing is also about "security of tenure", Farha explained. "You should not be fearful that you're going to lose your home [at any time]." Today, approximately 900 million people are living in "informal settlements" without the security of tenure - entire communities that have grown up in slum-like conditions. These communities are often razed by profit-driven developers and governments with little notice and no offer of substitute housing. Forced eviction is "considered a gross violation of human rights ... No community should be evicted unless there is absolutely no viable alternative." The incidence of homelessness is also rising. "If you look at North America, if you look at Europe, what are we seeing? Rising rates of homelessness in the richest countries in the world. That, to me, is where we get into extremely shameful territory, extremely shameful. Why is that? How is it acceptable that GDPs are increasing all the time ... and homelessness is rising all the time?" "I don't think that homelessness has been viewed as the human rights issue that it is. I don't think it's been given the urgency of political will, of social policy that it deserves and so, I think that's also part of the problem ... Once people lose their housing and become homeless, they often are open to any of a number of social ills," Farha said. "People are always like, 'Oh, the people who are homeless, they're all crazy; they all have psychological problems'. Many, many people who hit the streets are completely of sound mind. It's the trauma of being on the street that can trigger psycho-social disability ... The trauma of living on the street is what often leads people to do things like drugs." Asked whether the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which includes solving the problem of inadequate housing, can be achieved by its target date, Farha said that "we have to strive to reach that goal in 12 years. States have that obligation, they've made that commitment ... I think that huge strides could be taken ... [to] ensure accountability of governments to the people, that ensure equality, those sorts of things ... If that was guiding housing policy, maybe we would inch towards that 2030 deadline and More from Talk To Al Jazeera on: YouTube - http://aje.io/ttajYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/talktoaj Twitter - http://twitter.com/talktoaljazeera Website - http://www.aljazeera.com/talktojazee - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Every summer, Amira Abujbara boards a nine-seater plane at a tiny air taxi office. It is the same plane, with the same pilot, that she has flown in almost every year of her childhood. The 50-minute flight will take her over a snowy mountain range, a volcano and an elaborate tundra of blueberries and mushrooms, tea leaves and caribou moss, wildflowers and spider webs. She is heading to her mother’s childhood home and the place where she spends her summers – the remote Alaskan village of Iliamna. Without any roads connecting it to the outside world, this is her only way of going ‘home’. Iliamna, which is an Athabascan word meaning “big ice” or “big lake” sits on the shore of the lake that shares its name. The largest in Alaska, it spans more than 2,500 square kilometres, is pure enough to drink from and is home to the biggest sockeye salmon run in the world. Iliamna shares a post office, school, airport, medical clinic and two small stores with the neighbouring village, Newhalen. Together, they have fewer than 300 residents. It is a far cry from her father’s home country, Qatar, where Amira spends the rest of the year. Her father is Qatari and her mother is Dena’ina - a subset of the Athabascan Alaska Natives. Amira was born in Alaska and is registered as an Alaska Native. When her father married her mother he promised her parents that they would return regularly and so Amira and her sister spent their summers in Iliamna. Their grandmother ran a bed and breakfast for fishermen, so she would help make the beds, clean and prepare the meals for her guests. She learned how to subsistence fish – catching, smoking, brining and canning salmon during the summer months to store for the rest of the year. For the villagers, their home is a beautiful and fruitful land, but it is also a place of incredible hardships. Tiny villages are dwarfed by the vast wilderness that surrounds them, and while the region is rich in natural resources, many Alaska Natives struggle to remain above the poverty line. According to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, over any five-year period between 1993 and 2013, an average of 11 percent of the state’s rural population moved into urban areas. Those aged 18 to 24 are the most likely to leave. But life in the city can be overwhelming for those used to the safety net of a tight-knit rural community. Then there are the alcohol and substance abuse rates: in Alaska, age-adjusted rates of alcohol-induced deaths are 71.4 per 100,000 for Alaska Natives and 12.1 for whites. Suicide rates for Alaska Natives are almost four times the national average, and Alaska Natives are far more likely to succumb to each of the state’s leading causes of death – cancer, heart disease and unintentional injury – than their white counterparts. In Alaska, Native children are nearly three times as likely as white children to die before their fifth birthday. The situation Alaska Natives face can, perhaps, best be summarised by a note in the minutes of a meeting of Newhalen residents. In a list of wishes for the community’s future, one states simply: “To still be here.” But why is this community so at risk and will a proposed gold and copper mine, located close to the villages, endanger it further still? Residents know it offers the promise of jobs, but there are fears it could ruin the salmon run, and with it, their way of life. We Are Still Here tells the story of a community fighting to preserve its culture and its connection to the land.