Young in age, old in experience

"I wanted to show the outside world what I see every time I meet these children, their stunning eyes and their tough life standing together in front of my lens. I want these beautiful children to be remembered by their names not as displaced Afghan refugees."
Muhammed Muheisen


Laiba Hazrat, 6 years old

Muhammed Muheisen, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Time Magazine Best Wire Photographer of 2013, spent three years taking photographs of Afghan refugees living in camps in Pakistan (via), "the largest and most protracted refugee population in the world" (via). About 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees are living in Pakistan, about one million live illegally there - a legacy of continuous conflicts in the past decades (via).


Hasanat Mohammed, 5 years old

"They are so young in age but, unlike most children they are old in experience and know how to persevere."
Muhammed Muheisen


Madina Juma'a, 4 years old

According to UNICEF, one in five Afghan children will die before reaching the age of five, 600.000 children sleep in streets, more than two million are orphans (via, 2011).


Top: left: Hazrat Babir, 7 years old; right: Gullakhta Nawab, 6 years old
Bottom: left: Zarlakhta Nawab, 6 years old; right: Abdulrahman Bahadir, 13 years old

Early recruitment of children in Afghanistan is a serious problem. In 2013 alone, at least 97 boys were recruited into armed groups, some were as young as 8 years old (via).


Hayat Khan, 8 years old

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