Save The Children have released a ‘second a day’ video interpretation of what it would be like to experience Syria’s devastating civil war here in the UK. Their tag line: ‘Just because it isn’t happening here, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.’
Many have labelled the video as ‘shocking’ and ‘haunting’, and yet these are the kind of ordeals the people of Syria are living through each and every day. In this, Save The Children have achieved exactly what they were hoping to with this minute and a half piece – they have brought the situation, almost 3000 miles away, right to our doorstep, and in doing so have broken cultural barriers and the detachment from numbers and figures of those affected, instead replacing them with a reality so close to our own hearts that it’s impossible to not consider the suffering of the Syrian people.
As they say: Just because it isn’t happening here, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
‘Syria’s civil war has cost the lives of more than 11,000 children and turned more than 1 million into refugees. It has subjected them to trauma, indiscriminate shelling and even torture.’ Find out more on Save The Children’s campaign ‘Save Syria’s Children’ on their website here and watch the video below:
Please comment below with any thoughts. Does Save The Children’s video achieve its aim, and should we really need to have the situation translated into our own societal understanding to realise the devastation that is being endured in Syria?