The Syrian refugee walked across the Jordanian border, reached into her pocket and held up a car key.

It took place in the briefest of moments but it left a big impression on Tara Sutton, an award-winning journalist and photographer whose work has taken her to conflict zones around the world.

“The day before she’d been someone with a car, a life and things; today she was a refugee with only the clothes on her back,” the Canadian national said of that 2012 encounter.

“People from stable countries always think it could never happen to them. Once you witness it first-hand you realise, of course it could happen to anyone.”

The 45-year-old will share stories of the refugees she has met from Syria and Iraq at a lecture at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute tonight.

She was invited here by Neil Glass, a Bermuda resident she’s working with on a film about human trafficking.

Ms Sutton divides her time between Jordan and Toronto, where she has a husband and two young children. She set up a base in the Arab nation in 2003, while covering the war in Iraq.

“I fell in love with the region,” she said. “I like the extremes that you find there. I like the history and the traditions. I like the warmth of the people and hospitality.”

Approximately 600,000 Syrian and 100,000 Iraqi refugees call Jordan home. Ms Sutton sits on the board of a non-profit organisation, Collateral Repair Project, set up to provide them with emergency assistance — food vouchers, medical support, fuel and clothing. The scheme also grants access to community-building workshops.

“In Jordan we have 40 or 50 families a day knocking on the door,” she said. “I think about it all the time. As a conflict reporter I always have the opportunity to leave and the locals don’t have that chance.

My main goal is to let people know a little bit more of the human side of the problem. People may have seen all the numbers, but I want to make people feel more connected to the situation.”

She will often hear refugees’ stories first-hand, in their homes.

“The human spirit has an incredible will to survive,” she said. “I can go to the home of a refugee and they will still offer me a cup of coffee even though they have nothing in the fridge. I find that incredibly inspiring.”

She visited one woman who left her husband in Syria and crossed the border with four sons. The cement walls in her home were bare, and the windows broken.

“Her husband had quit the Syrian army because he didn’t want to fight his own people,” said Ms Sutton. “He told her she should leave with the kids.

“As an army deserter he was worried the army would go after his family. As soon as his family got out of the country, he deserted and joined the resistance.”

Once she reached Jordan the woman, a midwife in her 40s, learnt her husband had been killed.

Said Ms Sutton: “The last message he sent to her was a love poem that began ‘Precious remains precious, and visits me every night’. She told the story without crying. She said if she broke down she wouldn’t be able to care for her sons.”

She started sharing her stories on Iraqi refugees in Jordan after she noticed Syrians were entering the region in great numbers in 2012. She’d like to see more countries in the west opening their doors.

“Something has to happen so little kids aren’t drowning every night trying to cross from Turkey to Europe,” she said. “But most Syrian refugees in Jordan are too poor to pay $5,000 to cross to Europe in a boat.”

The freelance journalist’s reports from Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Colombia, Cuba, Jordan, Pakistan, Syria, and Liberia have appeared on BBC Newsnight, the CBC, Channel 4, Discovery and Al Jazeera.

Her many awards include one from Amnesty International, for exposing war crimes in the battle of Fallujah.

As a youngster, she wanted to be a fiction writer but her father encouraged her to think about journalism.

“It turned out that journalism was all the things I liked, telling stories and having adventures,” she said.

“I have always been into human rights and injustice. I never got around to writing fiction; maybe one day.”

• Her talk begins at 7.30pm tonight. Tickets, $20 for members and $25 for non-members, are available on 294-0204 or at the BUEI gift shop. For more information visit http://www.collateralrepairproject.org