Exit Wounds

Exit Wounds is an independent reporting and photography project founded by Kamil Qadri, documenting how young people live with the lasting consequences of conflict, displacement, and political upheaval. Through field interviews and photography, the project connects political decisions to everyday realities on the ground: interrupted education, uncertain futures, and the work of rebuilding a life.

Existing reporting spans Lebanon, Romania, and Greece, from Syrian families in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley weighing return against the lives they have built in exile, to young Ukrainian refugees finding their footing in Bucharest, and protest movements in Athens. Exit Wounds follows what happens beyond the immediate headlines, placing the experiences of young people and their communities at the center, with further reporting trips planned.

Qadri reporting from the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, October 2025

Four brothers help move a heavy tarp, while their father works on a tented shelter behind them. Beqaa Valley, Lebanon.

Kamil Qadri is an American freelance journalist, photographer, and founder of Exit Wounds, an independent reporting project examining how political decisions reach people’s lives, and where the policies meant to protect them fall short. His work centers on young people and displaced communities living with the aftermath of war, tracing how decisions about aid, borders, and return shape their safety, education, and futures.

He has reported from Syrian refugee settlements in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, documented Ukrainian youth rebuilding their lives in Bucharest, and covered protest movements in Athens. Qadri speaks English, Urdu, and is conversational in Russian and Turkish.

Alongside his field reporting, he works as a Conflict Research Associate at MEA Institute and a refugee casework intern with the International Rescue Committee in Richmond. His reporting is driven by a central question: what do political promises mean for the people who have to live with their consequences?