NEW YORK - It's an unexpected sight among Central Park's manicured lawns: a refugee camp, complete with emergency food, portable medical care and makeshift latrines.
Missing Friday from the tent encampment were an estimated 33 million refugees around the world whom war, natural disasters and politics have forced out of their homes.
“Many refugees are living far from the eye of the media, and even we often don't have access to those who need help,” said Dr. Darin Portnoy, president of the U.S. chapter of Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning group that delivers emergency aid in more than 70 countries.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, as it was called by the French doctors who founded it in 1971, erected the 8,000-square-foot display camp in the heart of the Manhattan park as part of a U.S. tour showing how people live after fleeing conflict.
From Colombia and Chechnya to Sudan, the most vulnerable victims are children who succumb to malnutrition or die easily from the dysentery or cholera that attack refugees living in crowded places, which can become breeding grounds for diseases, Portnoy said.
In the Central Park medical tents, emergency vaccines were on display, as were instructions on how to avoid contracting tuberculosis, or AIDS during pregnancy.
Another tent offered high-energy milk and high-protein biscuits - a shot of energy for the frail.
Other tents and a straw hut were one-room shelters where everything is shared, from pots to walls.
Aid workers who had traveled to strife-ridden corners of the world offered first-hand accounts of how the camp looks in action.
“In refugee camps, there is no privacy,” said Beznick Doli, a native of Kosovo who fled to Albania in 1999 during the Yugoslav conflict.
The civil engineer was helped by Doctors Without Borders and now, living back in Kosovo, works for the group.
Under a steady rain in Central Park, the dozen tents and shacks sitting on a soggy hilltop offered just a glimpse of the refugees' dismal, dangerous lives. But the human faces in photos assembled for the exhibit spoke of the pain best:
A little girl from civil strife-torn Colombia carries her younger brother on her back, wandering in the countryside outside a village abandoned after a massacre. An 11-year-old boy from Chechnya is mentally traumatized after living for years in a camp - a refuge from a war in which civilians have been tortured and raped.
“Living as a refugee is never a choice. People leave their homes as a last resort,” said Portnoy, a family medicine specialist at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
He said thousands of former refugees now live in New York, and some are his patients. They hail from lands such as Liberia and the Balkans.
Portnoy has worked in one of the most harrowing countries not only for refugees, but for aid workers, too - Sudan. Many aid groups have been forced to leave because they were attacked.
Medecins San Frontieres won the Nobel prize in 1999 for its work. Having no political or religious affiliations, the private organization is often welcomed, or at least tolerated, in areas of conflict where neutrality is crucial for access.
“We may be where no other aid agency is present,” Portnoy said.
Among its recent supporters are celebrity authors J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and John Irving, who this summer held benefit readings in New York that raised money for the organization.
The model camp is to move to Brooklyn's Prospect Park on Wednesday. The exhibit is then to open in Atlanta's Piedmont Park on Sept. 27, in Nashville's Centennial Park on Oct. 4.
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On the Net:
Doctors Without Borders: http://www.msf.org
AP-ES-09-15-06 1649EDT
“Many refugees are living far from the eye of the media, and even we often don't have access to those who need help,” said Dr. Darin Portnoy, president of the U.S. chapter of Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning group that delivers emergency aid in more than 70 countries.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, as it was called by the French doctors who founded it in 1971, erected the 8,000-square-foot display camp in the heart of the Manhattan park as part of a U.S. tour showing how people live after fleeing conflict.
From Colombia and Chechnya to Sudan, the most vulnerable victims are children who succumb to malnutrition or die easily from the dysentery or cholera that attack refugees living in crowded places, which can become breeding grounds for diseases, Portnoy said.
In the Central Park medical tents, emergency vaccines were on display, as were instructions on how to avoid contracting tuberculosis, or AIDS during pregnancy.
Another tent offered high-energy milk and high-protein biscuits - a shot of energy for the frail.
Other tents and a straw hut were one-room shelters where everything is shared, from pots to walls.
Aid workers who had traveled to strife-ridden corners of the world offered first-hand accounts of how the camp looks in action.
“In refugee camps, there is no privacy,” said Beznick Doli, a native of Kosovo who fled to Albania in 1999 during the Yugoslav conflict.
The civil engineer was helped by Doctors Without Borders and now, living back in Kosovo, works for the group.
Under a steady rain in Central Park, the dozen tents and shacks sitting on a soggy hilltop offered just a glimpse of the refugees' dismal, dangerous lives. But the human faces in photos assembled for the exhibit spoke of the pain best:
A little girl from civil strife-torn Colombia carries her younger brother on her back, wandering in the countryside outside a village abandoned after a massacre. An 11-year-old boy from Chechnya is mentally traumatized after living for years in a camp - a refuge from a war in which civilians have been tortured and raped.
“Living as a refugee is never a choice. People leave their homes as a last resort,” said Portnoy, a family medicine specialist at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
He said thousands of former refugees now live in New York, and some are his patients. They hail from lands such as Liberia and the Balkans.
Portnoy has worked in one of the most harrowing countries not only for refugees, but for aid workers, too - Sudan. Many aid groups have been forced to leave because they were attacked.
Medecins San Frontieres won the Nobel prize in 1999 for its work. Having no political or religious affiliations, the private organization is often welcomed, or at least tolerated, in areas of conflict where neutrality is crucial for access.
“We may be where no other aid agency is present,” Portnoy said.
Among its recent supporters are celebrity authors J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and John Irving, who this summer held benefit readings in New York that raised money for the organization.
The model camp is to move to Brooklyn's Prospect Park on Wednesday. The exhibit is then to open in Atlanta's Piedmont Park on Sept. 27, in Nashville's Centennial Park on Oct. 4.
---
On the Net:
Doctors Without Borders: http://www.msf.org
AP-ES-09-15-06 1649EDT
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