Amnesty International Poland recently launched a project titled " Look Beyond Borders," in which refugees from Syria and Somalia were asked to sit opposite of Europeans and engage in uninterrupted eye contact for four minutes.
The experiment is based on a theory by psychologist Arthur Aron in 1997. His theory argues that looking into another persons eyes can bring people closer. The refugees and Europeans fall nothing short of that.
"Only when you sit down opposite a specific person and look into their eyes, you no longer see an anonymous refugee, one of the migrants, and notice the human before you, just like yourself – loving, suffering, dreaming,..." the organization says in the video caption.
The experiment was conducted in Berlin with refugees who mostly came from Syria and had not been living in Europe for more than a year.
On May 19, Amnesty International's Refugee Welcome Index, a study conducted across 27 countries, showed that 80 percent of those surveyed said they would welcome a refugee into their country; 10 percent into their home.