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The Shatila refugee camp in Beirut: overwhelmed and under strain

Today, over 22,000 Palestinian refugees live in the Shatila refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut. Most of them belong to families who had to leave Palestine during the Nakba of 1948. However, since war broke out in Syria in 2011, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have seen a dramatic influx of Syrian refugees and are completely overwhelmed. By Mohammad Reza Hassani

Palestinians living in Lebanon are not entitled to apply for Lebanese citizenship. They are, to all intents and purposes, stateless, which means that they cannot own property and enter certain professions in Lebanon. Most of them live – cut off from Lebanese society – in one of the country's 12 big Palestinian refugee camps.
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In 532, the Roman Emperor Justinian ordered the construction of an awe-inspiring church in his residence, Constantinople, "one that has never existed since Adam's time, and one that will never exist again." Around 10,000 workers were involved in its construction. For a millennium, the basilica on the Bosphorus remained Christendom’s biggest church.

The belle of the Bosphorus

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul has become a bone of contention. Since it was secularised in 1935, it has been a museum. Now Turkish nationalists want to turn it back into a mosque - while the Patriarch of Constantinople wants to use it as a church again. A photo essay by Klaus Dahmann.