Somalia's Fleeing Youth

Sixty Somali teenagers who have fled from their homes were asked by the Danish Refugee Council for a snapshot of their life taken in July or August. Here is a selection of their photographs.

More than one in eight Somalis is displaced. Zahra, 19, took this picture of her family in its makeshift shelter. Hundreds of thousands of people have settled along the 30km road stretching from the capital to Afgoye.

Another 560,000 people have been forced into exile, mostly to Kenya and Yemen. Faiso, 18, took this shot in Dadaab's overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya. "It is difficult here, but we have peace," she says.

Abdikarim, 20, photographed his friend in Mogadishu, Somalia’s once beautiful and flourishing capital. Two decades of violence have turned it into one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

The family of 16-year-old Ali Ali is now in Bossasso, a bustling city on Somalia's northern tip. "Mogadishu was not a good place to be, there was too much killing. We could not stay there," he says.

"What makes me happy is to be with my mother, my father and my sister," says 12-year-old Amina, who took this picture in one of the six settlements for displaced people in Hargeisa, in the breakaway Somaliland region.

Famo, 15, photographed some of the thousands who have travelled 330km north from Mogadishu to Somalia's second largest city, Beledweyne, near the Ethiopian border.

Sadam, 16, took this picture at Mogadishu’s airport which became home to 700 people at the end of 2006.

"There is no water, no electricity and it is very hot. This is not life," says Abeer, 20, who took this shot in a slum on the outskirts of Aden in Yemen where 100,000 Somali refugees live.

Twenty-year-old Sid-Ali’s photo shows one of the thousands of people who have been injured in the ongoing violence in Mogadishu. Their access to health care remains extremely limited.

Aisha, 16, took this picture in Hargeisa. Her family fled to relatively peaceful Somaliland from Mogadishu when she was four years old. "I dream of being an air hostess," she says.