Educational Media Reviews Online

“Refugee camp, camp for displaced person, detention center, The Jungle. The names may vary, but the reality is the same. [A place] where the rich countries want to keep out at all costs.” ---Ann Poiret

Filmmaker and narrator Anne Poiret is no stranger to exploring, and exposing humanitarian crisis across the globe. In her latest documentary-feature, Welcome to Refugeestan, she uncovers what it must feel like for a person to flee a civil war, dictatorship, and/or genocide and enter into a world of invisibility shrouded in semi-humane living conditions. As Michel Algier, Ethnologist, points out, “in general, the camp is based on the principle of invisibility. These places are made for those people considered surplus.”

Praised for her investigative journalism for films such as: Mutter a Crime against Humanitarians, State Builders (2013), and Namibia, The Forgotten Genocide, the film details the life of newly arrived refugees and the robotic ritual to becoming “a citizen in the land of camps.” With labels such as “The Jungle,” refugee camps are severely overpopulated, isolated from local communities, marginally safe, and serve as basins for unsanitary conditions and disease. Unfortunately, many refugees will spend upwards of 17 years living in camps. One talking head suggests that refugee camps are no more than extensions of post-colonial slavery encampments.

Poiret estimates some 17 million people currently living within refugee camps. However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) puts the number closer to 65 million worldwide. The largest camps are located in Kenya, Tanzania, Jordan, and South Sudan.

The Refugee Council USA website states, “there are more displaced persons today than at any other point in the history of the world…over half of all recorded refugees are children. According to the UNHCR website, what initially began as an organization to help millions of displaced Europeans during WWII currently now serves those primarily fleeing civil strife in Africa and the Middle East. According to Poiret, the UNHCR’s initial purpose to protect refuges now operates as its own individual “welfare state” with an annual budget of 7 billion dollars with 9,000 staff.

The documentary also sheds light on how refugee camps are constructed, and how some camps are testing sites for improved security and technologically innovation. For example, in Jordan, companies such as IKEA provides 20 million euros to UNHCR to finance innovation to build better solar farms. It is no surprise that more and more private sectors are investing in refugee camps for both cheap labor, and “goodwill” policy to improve the life of the refugee.

In English, and French with English subtitles. I highly recommend this film for high school, public and academic libraries.