Seven stories about students from an ordinary Russian school—immigrants from Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Palestine, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—are based on real events and reveal the difficulties that refugee children and their families must overcome. Language barriers and cultural differences, lack of legal status and government support, poverty, social isolation, and bullying are just some of the challenges faced by forced migrants.

The graphic stories, collected by writer Alexey Oleinikov and created by students from the Higher School of Economics, are supplemented with global statistics and brief information about the countries of origin and the reasons for forced migration. The book also includes a guide on how to help people in similar situations.
 
The book was published jointly with the United Nations Refugee Agency with the support of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

5 reasons to buy the book 'Running is not staying': 

• A unique project of the UN Refugee Agency; 
• The stories of the comic book characters are based on the lives of real people; 
• Information that will help you think outside the box and look at the problems of refugees, migrants, stateless persons and asylum seekers from a different perspective; 
• The fictional part is supplemented with non-fiction information about countries and global statistics;
• An opportunity to understand others a little better and become kinder to people, regardless of their nationality.

AUTHOR ABOUT THE BOOK:

“The UN Refugee Agency contacted Samokat Publishing House. They saw that Samokat had a book about refugees, “Say Hello to Me!” And I was the one doing it. “Run, Don’t Stay” was made in collaboration with HSE students, who drew the illustrations. It was teamwork: I came up with stories and scripts for the comics, and the students brought them to life. The result is a social, educational comic that solves a clear problem – to talk about “invisible people” who are excluded from our society, to show that these children walk the same streets as us, and how they are different from us. They have no documents, no passports, their entire lives are outside the law. To convey how they find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis, between bureaucratic restrictions on one hand and the traditions of the past, their families on the other. This often affects their lives.

For example, a girl came to Russia at four years old from Afghanistan, grew up here, and knows Russian better than Farsi. Her father supported her, saying, 'You should study...' She's already integrated into local life, she has friends. Children adapt quickly, get used to things. For her, what happened before the move is a vague fairy tale. But for her parents, who are still mentally in Afghanistan, everything is different. They lived well there; her father held a high position, but he lost everything with the arrival of the Taliban. And then, in ninth grade, the girl suddenly learns that a relative in Afghanistan, with whom she is asked to communicate, is her potential fiancé; they want to marry her off. He is 20 years her senior, she doesn't understand how she will return back to Afghanistan, what she will do, and her parents say everything is fine. They chose a wealthy and respected man for the girl, arrange their daughter's life, and do what they can for her. It must have taken a lot of effort for the father to arrange the wedding. But for the girl, it's a total collapse of her life. She's an excellent volleyball player—what kind of women's volleyball can we talk about in Afghanistan? This is one example of the storyline. It's about parents, about children, about dictatorship, about how difficult it is to be stuck between two cultures. The comic's goal is to bring these invisible people to light and show their problems and tragedies.'