Fosia’s oldest son had felt the pressure of responsibility building in the months before he decided to leave Somaliland and take his chances with smugglers who promised a route to Europe where he might find work and a way to support his dependents. When he went, it was without any warning, leaving his mother distressed, heartbroken, and without support.

“All I want is for my children to grow up in a peaceful country,” says Daniel, an Eritrean refugee, expressing a fundamental human desire that nevertheless remains out of reach for many, especially those forced to flee their homes.

As conflict raged around them, the situation appeared bleak for young parents Selam and Solomun, an Eritrean refugee couple trapped in Libya after being cheated by smugglers.

The last time Haweya spoke to her son Hamza, he was about to board a boat across the Mediterranean Sea. “Mom, pray for me and let all the neighbours pray for me!” he told her over the phone.

When Muna, an Eritrean refugee, left Sudan with her husband and children four years ago, they believed they were leaving their troubles behind, but it proved to be just the beginning. Driving through the desert in Libya, they were kidnapped by bandits, and held for nearly two years by different traffickers, a period Muna recalls with horror. “Beatings, murder, rape, and starvation,” she says. “They make you hate your life. They make you lose your will to live.”

When Kiflom Meles moved to Bologna, in northern Italy, two years ago, he discovered a new world of artistic inspiration, which he captures with oils on canvas. Surrounded by the city’s ancient towers and historic buildings, Kiflom’s subject-matter has changed since being relocated from the Horn of Africa, but his skills and enthusiasm remain constant.

Life became a two-year-long nightmare of violence and captivity when Adonay, now 25, arrived in Libya. All he wanted was to enjoy basic freedoms, rights, and the opportunity to work—but he escaped open-ended military conscription in his home country of Eritrea only to find himself trapped in another, more brutal form of captivity.

After the murders of his father and brother by Al-Shabaab militants, 15-year-old Saeed felt at risk. He left his home in the central city of Buloburde to seek security and opportunity elsewhere in Somalia. He left behind his mother, sisters, girlfriend and everything he knew

Najma* was just 15 when she became pregnant. She was living in Qoryooley, a town in Somalia’s southern Lower Shabelle region that was, at the time, under the control of Islamist insurgents from Al-Shabaab. The jihadists were known to stone unmarried pregnant women to death, but Najma’s life was not at risk from them alone.

At home in Somalia, Amina was slowly losing hope. She had lost family members to war or illness, and lived in a region under the brutal control of Islamist Al-Shabaab militants. Alone, she could not imagine how to carry on. So when some young people in her neighbourhood heard they could make a new life elsewhere and began planning to leave the country, Amina, then 18, joined them. “Sometimes, life just forces you,” she says of the decision.

Born in Eritrea, Jamal was just a young child when his parents fled to Sudan.He grew up knowing little beyond the refugee camp he called home. As a teenager, he felt trapped and, like so many others, longed for wider horizons and greater opportunities.