You remember the photo: A little boy on a beach, his head turned a bit to the side, as if he had just fallen asleep. The boy had in fact drowned, a harrowing casualty of his family’s flight from war-torn Syria. Though the photo spurred the world to action, that momentum soon faded—a fact that, unfortunately, wasn’t much of a surprise.
What’s more remarkable, according to a strongly-worded new study: By the time Aylan Kurdi drowned, hundreds of thousands had been killed in the war, and millions more had fled their homes or left the country altogether, according to a Guardian report (which cited statistics from the United Nations) that was published September 2, 2015, the day Kurdi died. Yet before that day and again soon after, private citizens’ interest and donations barely registered—a stark reminder that we’re not equipped to deal with disasters on the scale of the Syrian war.
[For more of this story, written by Nathan Collins, go to https://psmag.com/a-war-a-boy-...785d56f08#.mbz4x9hrv]
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