Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi SJ / Issue 1909 / 29 August 2019
In the summer of 2015, three-year-old Alan Kurdi was found dead on a Turkish beach. His Syrian family had fled their war-torn homeland. The image of that drowned child in the arms of a soldier disturbed us all.
In the fall of 2018, seven-year-old Amal Hussain died of a deadly disease: hunger. Her photograph appeared in The New York Times: undernourished, she lay waiting for death, without even the strength to cry. Amal was in a health center where the nurses gave her milk every two hours. It was useless. She could not keep it down and also had severe diarrhea. In her war-torn country, Yemen, a hostile coalition had set up a blockade making it extremely difficult to obtain emergency food and aid.
These two depressing photos of two dead children in two warring nations can leave no one indifferent. Alan had no guaranteed meals in his native Syria; Amal was reduced to skin and bones. In fact, in five years of war in Yemen, according to estimates from Save the Children, the scourge of hunger has caused the death of 85,000 children.[1]
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