We had all been hearing about the refugee crisis in Syria but let’s be honest, how many of us took it to a serious discussion, questioning the very basis of it? How many of us got really uncomfortable and downright angry about it? 

All we did was post a status message, share a link and care just a little bit about a warn-torn situation in another part of the world.

It’s sad how it took the stirring image of a 3-year-old’s lifeless body washed ashore to finally give us a jolt. A boy who should be running around on the streets, playing hide and seek with his friends and enjoying his innocence and childhood had to succumb to a war that was not his. 

But even after we cried inside or on the outside seeing that photograph, did we really care enough? Statistics claim otherwise. As far as the numbers are concerned, nothing really has changed. In fact, things have only gone worse. 

“Let this be the last.”

These were the words of Alan’s father – Abdullah Kurdi – two days after his son’s tragic demise. But what he has to say a year on sums up the ground reality…

“People are still dying and no one is doing anything about it.”

…said Kurdi talking to Daily Mail

And, as sad as it sounds, this is indeed the ugly truth. 

In the year 2015 alone, 65.3 million people were displaced from Syria, out of which 21.3 million people were refugees and worse still, 51% of that figure includes children who were below the age of 18. 

Not only this, so far in 2016, 2 children have drowned each day while trying to make their way to Europe. 

Erstwhile British Prime Minister David Cameron had addressed this issue and claimed that his country would take in 4000 Syrian refugees each year but there has been absolutely no development on that front.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, around 14,040 children under the age of 18 have died during the Syrian crisis. 

Each passing day, more and more children are dying.

Which brings us  to the photograph of Omran Daqneesh. After Alan, the 5-year-old became the latest image of the destruction and devastation in Syria. All of 5 years, he was rescued from the rubble after an air-strike in his hometown of Aleppo last month. 

The sheer shock on the boy’s face while he was being rescued summed it all up. He had absolutely no idea what was going on around him. 

Plato once wrote, ”only the dead have seen the end of war.” And as sickening as it is, how true is that.

In today’s times, we use the word ‘trend’. So in 2015, the horrific image of Alan’s body washed ashore ‘trended’, so did Omran’s picture after he was rescued from the rubble. But let’s get down from these flimsy social media terminologies and believe that these aren’t just pictures meant to trend. These are grim realities, these are sickening jolts that this world of today needs. Everyone from world leaders to activists to the youth – the ones who think they can change – the world saw it but nothing has changed. 

And that’s the sad part. Lives are getting lost in bomb strikes, innocence is getting buried under the rubble, playgrounds have turned into graveyards… Will this world ever weep? Will this world ever stop watching and do something about it? 

Lastly, but most importantly, will this world ever care?