It has been well over five years since the atrocities occurring in Syria began. During that time thousands have been taken as political prisoners, hundreds of thousands have been killed (estimates range from 200,000 to well over 500,000), millions have fled the country and millions more have been internally displaced. Yet, for most of these years, the world has watched relatively quietly, as it has with several human rights crises around the world (in Burundi, Nigeria, North Korea etc.). For the first few years, whilst the media and much of the public were aware of those suffering in Syria, there was no uproar, no major attempts to pressure politicians into doing something, no ground breaking contributions being received and, arguably most importantly, no media frenzy (in the West). Whilst the victims of the crisis failed to receive significant attention, controversial opposition within Syria such as ISIL became worldwide news. This was not due to any inherent apathy within the general public, nor was it founded from a lack of compassion, but regardless, this lack of traction and action was very apparent in the beginning. Over the first two or three years there was a slow and steady rise in attention but, again, nothing ground breaking.
Everything changed in the summer of 2015, when a Syrian boy’s body was found on Turkish shores and photographed. With the publicised death of Aylan Kurdi, the innocent victims of the Syrian civil war had, for the first time, become a truly major issue to discuss throughout the world. Practically all developed countries in the world had political discussions regarding allowing Syrian refugees asylum, and millions of refugees were indeed granted asylum to developed countries, with Germany accepting 489,000 registered refugees in 2015 alone. Furthermore, there was a social media frenzy, millions, for example, watching videos of Syrian refugees being accepted into Germany. This all led to an inevitable spike in donations to charities aiming to help Syrian victims, with the United States Fund for Unicef reporting a 636% surge in donations in early September. Unfortunately, this was eventually drowned in controversy, with different political figures reacting in different manners, and some populist politicians seeing this as an opportunity to create more fear and division between cultures, and within a few months, the topic and concern had calmed down significantly, although it was still very much alive.
In this instance, it was the photograph of the lifeless Aylan Kurdi which sparked the (initially at least) mostly compassionate dialogue regarding the refugee crises, and the resultant progress made in the attempt to solve this crisis. But why did one photograph have such an impact? There had been many other, more graphic, photographs and videos of dead or dying children, men, women, elderly beforehand, sparking little dialogue, progress or outrage, so it clearly wasn’t that this was the first time the world was exposed to the suffering of victims of the civil war.
This happened once again not two weeks ago with the widespread video of an injured, motionless and shocked Omran Daqneesh sitting in the back of an ambulance, after being victim to regime airstrikes in Aleppo. Of course, at this early stage, the political fallout and consequence is unclear, however what is clear is that the victims of the Syrian Civil War are now back in the spotlight; millions have viewed and shared pictures and videos of Omran and are urging help for the victims and a no fly zone on cities such as the besieged Aleppo.
Once again, this is not the first image or video of a victim to be posted online, additionally, airstrikes on Aleppo have been occurring since 2013, so why has this video reached such an unusually large audience?
The significance of these two innocent souls is that they are not just statistics. Aylan was not just one of the 2,500 refugees drowned at sea, and Omran is not just one of the tens of thousands injured in the Battle of Aleppo. Aylan Kurdi was the three-year-old boy who was attempting to migrate to the Greek island of Kos, whose family was hoping to eventually settle in Vancouver. Omran Daqneesh is the five-year-old boy whose ten-year-old brother, Ali, did not survive the same airstrike that Omran and the rest of his family thankfully did. They were not just numbers. They were given names, faces, an age, a family. Perhaps this humanisation of two victims out of millions acted as a wakeup call for the developed world; these are indeed people who are suffering and it is not only combatants, innocent children are indeed being claimed by this war. Innocent children who are not extremist rebels, Al Assad loyalists, ISIL soldiers, they are simply innocent children and nothing else. Perhaps this realisation is what has caused the sudden surge in attention experienced in these two instances.
There is also a significant cycle of cause and effect between the public and mass media which has to be considered. For instance, now in the aftermath of the Omran Daqneesh video, mass media simply cannot get enough. Even certain tabloids which typically ignore the plight of Syrians and have demonstrated anti refugee rhetoric have posted several articles regarding Omran. This is arguably because of the sudden surge in interest; media outlets know that this is what currently interests the people and therefore post related to this subject expecting a greater number of readers. Conversely, it could be said that, whilst many media outlets follow whatever news is (or whatever they expect to be) trending, if the outlets themselves were to focus on an issue, they would create interest in that issue; if all broadsheets and tabloids were publishing Syria related articles a month ago in the frequency they currently are, surely this would have in itself led to a surge in interest and the resultant dialogue and progress.
That is what has to be taken away from these two unfortunate events in my opinion, because, yes eventually there will be another similar unfortunate event which leads to rediscovered traction, progress and dialogue however, if respectable media outlets report and publish consistently regarding this issue, then interest can be maintained (to a degree of course) and we will not have to wait until the next Aylan Kurdi or Omran Daqneesh for there to be internationally widespread concern for the victims of Syria. If these media outlets do not allow the issue of Syrian victims to fade, it would consequently lead to a sustained dialogue which may mean that it wouldn’t be long until there no longer are any new Aylan Kurdi’s, or Omran Daqneesh’s. I would argue that, as a result, such respectable media outlets have a moral obligation to do so.