This is the story of Aida who lost her husband and two children. This is the story of the 8 years old orphaned Ahmed who now is a child soldier. This is the story of a man who buried his one-year-old daughter. This is the story of a lost generation. A story about a country that has been ravaged and a people that have been forgotten.
After breaking the timeline of the Arab Spring conflicts, the Syrians have tested how long the West could stay interested and show sympathy. And we failed, miserably.
I am ashamed of how little these stories are spoken of in school. And it frightens me. I know that there is very little that we can do to actually end the conflict, but we must remember that there are others aspects of this conflict that we have the power to change. Today, there are more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees. They have left everything and now they are starting from nothing.
We must talk about them; we must never forget them. We must help them.
When the world of diplomacy is failing, we must intervene and do what we can. 77 kr would mean food for one person for a whole month. 200 kr is enough for 307 packages of oral rehydration therapy that would save a lot of children from dying from dehydration. A very small amount of money can actually save lives. See; I do not want to stand by and just watch. I do not want my future children to read about this in school and then ask me why we ignored a humanitarian crisis that we obviously had more than enough resources to deal with.
The Syrian conflict has reached a point where the amount of people that have died, fled or been orphaned has merely come to be additional numbers in sterile statistics. So I decided to give the numbers in these statistics a face. To remind you that these kinds of atrocities are not something that belongs to the past. This is now. And we have the power to change it. So here is my reminder to you: a reminder of what you missed in another part of our world while you were busy doing something else.
Go and see the photo exhibition about the Syrian Civil War outside the cafeteria!