2017 Photo Contest, Contemporary Issues, 2nd prize

Migrant Crossing

Photographer

Vadim Ghirda

The Associated Press

14 March, 2016

A woman is supported as refugees cross the Mala Reka river, near the Greek border town of Idomeni. They were attempting a route into Macedonia that would bypass a newly erected border fence.

Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia—countries that lie between Greece and preferred refugee destinations in northern Europe—had all closed their borders five days earlier. Hundreds of thousands of refugees had traveled through Macedonia the previous year, and the UN said that the build-up of people in a holding-camp at Idomeni was turning into a humanitarian disaster.

About the photographer

Vadim Ghirda

He joined the AP in 1990 at the age of 18 as communism was collapsing across Central and Eastern Europe. Ghirda started by covering the complex social and political turmoil gener...

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