Dear Commons Community,

Each year, UNICEF Germany and GEO Germany grant the “UNICEF Photo of the Year Award” to photos and photo series that best depict the personality and living conditions of children worldwide in an outstanding manner.

Swedish Photographer Niclas Hammarström is the winner for 2013. He is honored for his photo series on the life of children in the war-torn Syrian town of Aleppo.

UNICEF chose a haunting image of an injured and bleeding Syrian child named Dania (above), to underscore just how desperate the situation is for the youngest of refugees.

It has been nearly three years since the conflict started in Syria, but the grave crises children face there are no less severe today. The image depicts Dania, then 11 years old, being cradled in her brother’s hands after she was hit by shrapnel while playing in the street in Aleppo.   As described in a Huffington Post article:

“Dania’s expression is oddly serene despite the smatterings of blood strewn all over her face and clothing. It’s a stark reminder of how common such violence and suffering has become.

“[It’s] the face of an injured and severely traumatized child,” Daniela Schadt, patroness of UNICEF Germany, said in a statement. “The look on the child’s face is an appeal to the international community to strengthen its diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in order to prevent the loss of an entire generation of children.”

According to UNICEF, almost half of children in Syria live in an acute state of emergency, and few children have not faced violence or lost a family member.

In addition to enduring tumultuous violence, Syrian children are in danger of becoming a “lost generation,” since so many are being deprived of education and other basic necessities.

Before the crisis began in March 2011, an estimated 97 percent of elementary school-age children were enrolled in school and literacy rates surpassed the regional average, according to a UNICEF report released last December.

As of that month, there were 4.8 million Syrian children of school age. In Syria, 2.2 million of them were not in school, while more than half a million refugee children were not in school outside of Syria.”

This photo is sad reminder of a situation where violence knows no age.

Tony