Walaa, 5, in Dar-El-Ias.
by Maria Sofou
Syria is bleeding. More than 4 million people have left the country during the yearlong war, desperately hoping for a future that is not constantly penetrated by the fear of death. Among them are more than 1 million children under the age of 12.
Photojournalist Magnus Wennman travelled across Europe and the Middle East, meeting some of these children, capturing them as they struggle to find a shelter in this scary world. Wennman’s lens gives us a heartbreaking document of those childrens’ suffering, a suffering that does not stop even if they are miles away from their war-zone homes.
The story behind the photograph below as we read it in Wennman’s Instagram account is truly heartbreaking: “Sham 1 year old. Roszke/Horgos. In the very front, just alongside the border between Serbia and Hungary by the 4-meter-high iron gate, Sham is laying in his mother’s arms. Just a few decimeters behind them is the Europe they so desperately are trying to reach. Only one day before, the last refugees were allowed through and taken by train to Austria. But Sham and his mother arrived too late, along with thousands of other refugees who now wait outside the closed Hungarian border.”
Sham, 1, in Horgos, Serbia
Abdul Karim Addo, 17, sleeping in Omonoia Square in Athens, Greece
Ahmad, 7, sleeping on the ground in Horgos, Hungary
Ahmed, 6, sleeping on the ground in Horgos, Serbia
Fara, 2, asleep in Azraq, Jordan
Iman, 2, in a hospital bed in Azraq, Jordan
Mahdi, 1, asleep on the ground in Horgos, Serbia
Maram, 8, in Amman, Jordan
Mohammed, 13, in hospital in Nizip, Turkey
Ralia, 7 and Rahaf, 13, sleeping on the street in Beirut, Lebanon
Moyad, 5, in hospital in Amman, Jordan
Tamam, 5, in Azraq, Jordan