Young Syrians are having their childhoods “smashed to pieces” by the conflict, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife said Wednesday following a visit to Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley.
Samantha Cameron, a Save the Children ambassador, visited areas close to the Syrian border Tuesday on a trip with London-based charity.
“With every day that passes, more children and parents are being killed, more innocent childhoods are being smashed to pieces,” she said in a statement issued by the charity.
“As a mother, it is horrifying to hear the harrowing stories from the children I met today. No child should ever experience what they have,” she added.
Cameron spoke to children who had witnessed the violent deaths of their parents and siblings, as well as mothers whose children were killed by snipers, Save the Children said.
The prime minister’s wife was accompanied on her trip to the Bekaa Valley by Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher.
Following the visit, Fletcher said: “No one on either side of the Syria conflict can fail to be distressed by the impact that it has had on civilians, and the burden it has placed on host communities in Lebanon.
“It was heartbreaking and inspiring to meet such courageous individuals, so many of them children, and to hear their stories of survival, loss and displacement.”
Fletcher also took the opportunity to call on the international community to “redouble our effort to deliver pledges made at the Kuwait conference, and get help to those who need it so badly.”
International governments pledged some $1.5 billion in response to the humanitarian crisis precipitated by the conflict in Syria. However, only a small portion of that aid has actually been delivered.
Of the $1 billion UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, says it needs to meet the needs of Syrian refugees, just 31 percent has been received.
The U.N. says more than 1.1 million Syrians have fled – mostly to Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey – and some 4 million others have been displaced inside their war-torn country.
Lebanon has taken in more than 390,000 refugees from the conflict, according to the agency. - with AFP
