Save the Children Italia: Rapporto attività 2015

If we were sum up 2015 in an image, it would certainly be that of little Aylan, the Syrian child found drowned on the beach of Bodrum, a tourist paradise in Turkey. A photo that shook consciences all around the world. Together with Aylan, several hundred children have died in the Mediterranean. But that shock provoked by that photo was needed for public opinion and political institutions to open their eyes to a massacre and to the lacerating conflict in Syria which in 2015 triggered the worst migration crisis ever recorded in the Mediterranean.

Months later, what remained of that image? A Europe that continued to struggle and that abdicated its values by turning its back on all those men, women and children who flocked to its doors, out of fear and inability to welcome them. The hope that the unanimous indignation aroused by the image of little Aylan would trigger a resolute action to put an end to an unbearable situation seems to have given way to oblivion, indifference, impotence.

But not for Save the Children. That photo cannot be deleted or forgotten. It is not just an individual case, but hundreds, thousands of unheard tragedies and denied rights that the organisation encounters every day on the field.

Learn more about Save the Children Italy’s work through this 2015 activity report.