As he continues to document the plight of the world’s displaced people, photographer Giles Duley lands on the remote island of Nagu, south‑west Finland, and is moved by the hospitality shown to its new arrivals
• Finland’s warm welcome for refugees – in pictures
In October 2015, I arrived in Lesbos to begin work on a long-term project for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), documenting the refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East. It was a shocking, moving and deeply troubling experience. As I wrote in the Observer in November last year: “I thought I had seen it all, but I have never been so overwhelmed as by the human drama unfolding on the beaches of Lesbos. In its sheer scale, it is hard to comprehend; the lack of response impossible to explain or excuse.”
At that time, as I stood among the chaos and horror on the beaches of Lesbos, I could scarcely have imagined that three months later, telling the same story, I would find myself caught in the middle of a snowball fight on the remote island on Nagu on the southern west tip of Finland. Yet even here, in a small island community on the edge of Europe, the refugee crisis has had a huge impact. And as in Lesbos, it’s the local community and volunteers who have worked alongside NGOs to make a difference.
Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News 