One million Syrian children have now been registered as refugees, forced from their homeland by a war that is well into its third year.
Children make up half of all refugees from the Syria conflict, according to UNHCR. Most have arrived in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. Increasingly, Syrians are fleeing to North Africa and Europe. Latest figures show that of the one million Syrian refugees under the age of 18, some 740,000 are children under the age of 11 and that there are two million more internally displaced.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, works to protect and assist those fleeing war and persecution. Since 1950, they have helped tens of millions of people find safety and rebuild their lives.
Click here for a Photoblog from a refugee worker showing Life in a Syrian refugee camp in Domiz, the Kurdish Autonomous Region, Iraq.
I've posted this Naomi Shihab Nye poem before on my blog but when I saw it was posted on facebook today, I thought it was a particularly good one to reflect on today.
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| Photo: Sleeping Child by ~herbud on deviantART |
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.
We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
-Naomi Shihab Nye
Read more about and help support Syrian refugees: http://rfg.ee/maVm1
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