Meals eaten in tents or during the arduous journey from Syria to Europe. The struggle for food amid an uncertain future. These are among the moments being captured in photographs by a Japanese activist and aid worker hoping to bring awareness to the plight of the 11 million people displaced by the five-year Syrian civil war.

Keiko Tamura, 46, who has worked for some 15 years with international groups providing humanitarian aid in the Middle East and Africa, said she is angered by media reports that often label Syrians as merely "refugees," depicting them as people flooding other regions, not as individuals who have names and faces.

"No one is born a refugee; displacement isn't foreign to any nation, it's something we have experienced or might experience at any time, any place," Tamura told The Japan Times.