The 3,823rd person to be interviewed by the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic was a 16-year-old boy recovering from massive injuries in a hospital in a neighbouring country. His injuries were too severe to be treated inside Syria, where hospitals are intentionally attacked and indiscriminately shelled, and where medical aid is deliberately prevented from reaching communities who are desperately in need.
The boy, known as Z, thus became one of more than 10 million Syrians – more than half of the country’s population – to have fled their homes in search of care and safety. The timely intervention of Syrian search and rescue workers, the skill of foreign doctors and good fortune prevented Z becoming one of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed since the crisis began in March 2011.
Syria is one of the world’s most chaotic and lethal battlefields. With hundreds of armed militia, there are now wars within wars, all of them tearing the country and its people apart. Z told us that he was injured when a government helicopter dropped a barrel bomb on his village in the southern Dara’a governorate. These aerial bombardments by government forces have killed countless other children in locations across the country, including recently in Idlib and Aleppo.
Others have been killed and injured by rockets fired into Damascus city by armed groups. Schoolchildren in Homs have been killed and maimed by car and suicide bombs detonated by members of Jabhat Al-Nusra. Boys no older than Z have been publicly executed by Isis; others have died while fighting as child soldiers. The trauma suffered by the children of Syria is intolerable.