By: Amr Marzouk and Federica Violi
Introduction
Human rights are multifaceted. They represent an ideal of dignity and freedom that all humans deserve and strive for. They are also a legal concept and a legal category solidified by international treaties and international bodies, and which is constantly under attack by oppressive regimes. Epistemologically, human rights is a discipline of knowledge that aims to study issues and cases related to these dimensions. As scholars who research human rights-related issues, we are always faced with the challenge of how to channel our research to a wider audience. How can we transform statistics, testimonies, international standards and international courts’ verdicts into an engaging narrative for the public? How can we give relevance to that ‘ideal’?
To address this challenge, we organised a series of events exploring the relationship between human rights and the visual, where we aim to present how human rights issues and research are conveyed through the visual medium. In our third installment, we had the honour of hosting Professor Maja Janmyr of the University of Oslo, who worked with a team of illustrators to transform her work on Sudanese refugees in Lebanon into a graphic novel, Cardboard Camp. Dr Mieke Kox of Erasmus School of Law (ESL) also served as a discussant, engaging with Prof. Janmyr’s work and sharing her own research, which uses photography to depict the lives of refugees in Amsterdam. The event was sponsored by the Netherlands Network for Human Rights and was organised by Dr. Siobhan Airey, Amr Marzouk, Dr. Federica Violi from Erasmus Rotterdam University and Dr. Janna Wessels from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
In this blog post, we present an overview of the event by exploring the issues faced by Sudanese refugees in Lebanon through the work of Prof. Janmyr. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of visual methods both as a research approach and as a form of research output.
‘Cardboard Camp': When Research Meets Art
According to the European Commission, Lebanon has one of the highest numbers of refugees per capita. The country hosts around 1.5 million Syrian refugees in the country, 489,000 Palestinian refugees and 11,500 Sudanese refugees. Yet, among the latter, only 2,727 are registered as refugees by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). As Janmyr noted in a previous article, both the policy and academic gaze often neglect the experiences of Sudanese, Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees in Lebanon. The invisibility and the experience of the Sudanese refugees, in particular, were one of the core reasons for Professor Janmyr to carry out her research and convert it into a graphic novel.
Cardboard Camp is one of the outputs of Prof. Janmyr’s ‘Refugees and the Arab Middle East: Protection in States Not Party to the Refugee Convention (REF-ARAB)’ project. This project aimed to study the lived experiences of refugees in countries that did not join the 1951 Refugee Convention. The graphic novel is based on Professor Janmyr's fieldwork. It traces the experiences of three Sudanese refugees (the fictional characters of Fahima, Sultan, and Kudi) from their forced displacement up to protests held by refugees in front of the UNHCR offices in Lebanon. Notably, Sudanese refugees have been protesting in Lebanon since 2010, demanding that the UNHCR speed up the decision-making process related to their status.
According to the anti-racism movement in Lebanon, the UNHCR typically ended any refugee demonstrations by calling the police, which often resulted in arrests. In fact, across the wider region of the Middle East, local police often respond aggressively to refugees’ protests. For example, in 2005, the Egyptian police forcefully dismantled a sit-in camp of Sudanese refugees outside the UNHCR office in Cairo, resulting in the death of at least 25 people, including women and children.
Cardboard Camp does not shy away from such unsettling events. Collaboration with artists, their creativity, and the insights of refugees interviewed for the research project were crucial in bringing academic knowledge to life. However, this process of co-creation also came with challenges. During our event, Prof. Janmyr discussed the challenge of ensuring the privacy and safety of the refugees who shared their stories. She explained that while the characters and events in the graphic novel are fictional, they are drawn from a synthesis of real experiences. As a result, the novel remains true to the lived realities of Sudanese refugees while protecting their identities. Another key point addressed by Dr Janmyr was the researcher's positionality. While she appears in the graphic novel, her role is minimal, reflecting her actual position as a researcher who meets the characters in only a few scenes. She emphasised that trust from participants is essential in such research endeavours and that the refugees’ stories remain the novel’s central focus. To honour their agency, Dr. Janmyr ensured that refugees were actively consulted throughout different stages of production, incorporating their wishes, ideas, and perspectives into the final work.
Visual methods in research
After Dr. Janmyr highlighted the importance of visual methods in knowledge and research creation and dissemination, Dr. Mieke Kox shared her own experience using visual methods. She discussed her ‘Thuis in de Molenwijk’ research project. The research project is a collaboration between Picture Bridge Foundation, Framer Framed, and researcher Ilse Van Liempt (University of Utrecht). The project focused on the meaning of ‘home’ and consisted of a series of workshops and photoshoots in private and public settings with people of a migrant background in the Netherlands. The resulting exhibition provided participants with the opportunity to share their stories and define 'home' on their own terms, showcasing another way in which human rights research can be made accessible to a broader audience through visual media.
While the research questions, geographical focus, and aesthetic outputs were different (photographs rather than a graphic novel), the two projects shared significant similarities, particularly in the challenges related to the researcher’s positionality and the co-creation process with participants. This provided both guests with the opportunity to reflect, alongside the audience, not only on the challenges but also on the potential and strategies required to make a meaningful impact with these visual products.
In sum
The reflection that emerged from the event is that employing visual methods in knowledge production and dissemination is increasingly essential. It enables researchers to explore perspectives and experiences without distorting participants' voices, while also reaching broader audiences beyond their peers. From paintings like Guernica, which depicted the horrors of war, to documentaries like 13t, which addresses the absence of legal rights, and from graphic novels to photo exhibitions, the visual medium can connect ideals, legal concepts, and academic disciplines. As such, visual methods are not merely complementary to academic research; they can become a privileged means of both conducting research and disseminating results. They ensure that the stories and experiences of those most affected are authentically shared and help mobilise not only empathy, but also the legal consciousness of the viewers.
Bio:
Amr Marzouk is a PhD researcher at Law & Society and Crime department at Erasmus School of Law. His research focuses on the methods employed by illiberal and authoritarian regimes to exert control over the digital space, with a particular emphasis on the global south. He is also interested in epistemological inequalities and alternative methodologies.
Federica Violi is Associate Professor in International Law at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Dr. Violi received her PhD in international law from the University of Milan La Statale, with a thesis on land grabbing and permanent sovereignty over natural resources. She has been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment in New York. Her research focuses in the areas of international economic law, sovereignty over natural resources, investment contracts, international investment agreements, due diligence and law & art. She actively lends her expertise to inform institutional practice and NGOs' activities and has recently appeared as an expert before EU Parliamentary committee sessions, the Italian and the German Parliament.