Words and Pictures

Pascale Harter introduces stories of struggle and survival from correspondents and writers around the world.

What's it like to be a Syrian in Lebanon? Martin Bell is a distinguished former correspondent for the BBC and a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, meets some of the refugee families struggling to survive in the Bekaa Valley.

Nicola Kelly's in southern Egypt to hear the songs and stories of its Nubian people - many displaced by the Aswan dam and most feeling marginalised by the government in Cairo. They're still passionately attached to their culture, but fear for its future.

Tim Ecott marvels at the giants on sea and land (well, on rock) in the Baja California peninsula of northwestern Mexico. Offshore, whales of all kinds frolic and nurse their young, while up in the mountain ranges there's extraordinary rock art dating back thousands of years.

And Joanna Robertson chooses her words carefully in the Alpine region of Alto Adige, aka Sudtirol, in northern Italy. Around here, the decision to start a conversation in Italian, German, or the local dialect, can say much about you.

Image: A Syrian refugee girl walks in a flooded alley past tents at an unofficial refugee camp in the village of Deir Zannoun in Lebanon's Bekaa valley on January 31, 2017. (JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images)