4 year old Syrian boy cross desert alone after being separated from his family

10 years ago | Posted in: World | 884 Views

A heartbreaking picture has emerged of a little boy wandering in the desert alone after he was separated from his family while fleeing war-torn Syria.

Marwan, four, was found by UN workers near the border of Jordan and Syria, after he became separated from his family.

The boy was photographed carrying a plastic bag full of his possessions on Monday by Andrew Harper, Jordan’s representative to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.

Aid workers helped the boy cross the border into Jordan and a follow-up tweet from Mr Harper today let the world know that Marwan’s family had been found.

‘Just to let you know that Marwan was safely reunited [with] his mother soon after being carried across the Jordan border,’ he shared on Twitter, along with a second picture of the boy being carried by an aid worker.

 

 

It is unclear how long the boy was separated from his family. A reporter tweeted on Monday evening that a UNHCR official said Marwan was only 20 steps behind his family after he became lost during the confusion of the crossing.

Nonetheless, the picture of the isolated boy has struck a chord, perhaps because it serves as a reminder of the many young children who have lost or become separated from their families due to the conflict.

The picture of Marwan was one in a series of pictures posted by Mr Harper in the last few months, as the aid worker documents the ‘endless tide’ of refugees fleeing Syria into Jordan.

 

This week, Mr Harper has also published photos of Malala Yousafzai, the young education activist shot by Taliban gunmen while on a school bus in 2012, who has been at the Jordanian refugee camp, meeting with refugees and helping them to cross the border.

Last year, Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees called the conflict in Syria ‘a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history’.

The Syrian civil war started with popular protests across the country in 2011 during the Arab Spring, which turned into an armed conflict after the Syrian army fired on demonstrators across the country.

 

Different areas of the country are under government or opposition control and skirmishes take place across the country.

More than 130,000 people have been killed since the conflict began and  2.5 million people, including an estimated one million children, have been forced to flee the country. An additional 5 million people are internally displaced in Syria.

Most of these refugees have fled to camps in the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey.

Jordan, to the south of Syria, has taken in more refugees than any other country, with 613,104 refugees residing there at time of writing, according to UNHCR reports… see more

source: dailymail UK

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