It really is such a horrendous situation -- so many lives lost, so many people wounded with no medical care available, and so many refugees.
Visualizing the 220,000 lives lost in Syria
Graphic by Richard Johnson, Published: March 29, 2015
On March 16, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gave a speech in Tokyo marking this year’s 70th anniversary of the United Nations. The world institution, he said, “was created after the Second World War to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. We have to acknowledge that that vision by our founding fathers of the United Nations has not been fully realized.”
March 16 also marked the four-year anniversary of the start of the conflict in Syria.
The war began after the government of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests. The conflict gradually took on a sectarian character, with members of the Sunni majority opposing the Shiite Alawites around the president. Outside powers began supporting various armed groups, and extremist organizations such as the al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State took advantage of the chaos, seizing large amounts of territory.
Millions of Syrians have been displaced as the war has dragged on, but humanitarian groups worry that the world’s attention has turned elsewhere.
In the secretary general’s own words in Japan last week: “There is no more painful example of the failure of collective action of the United Nations than the conflict in Syria, now in its fifth year. More than 220,000 people have been killed.”
Continue reading at:
Visualizing the 220000 lives lost in Syria - Washington Post
Visualizing the 220,000 lives lost in Syria
Graphic by Richard Johnson, Published: March 29, 2015
On March 16, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gave a speech in Tokyo marking this year’s 70th anniversary of the United Nations. The world institution, he said, “was created after the Second World War to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. We have to acknowledge that that vision by our founding fathers of the United Nations has not been fully realized.”
March 16 also marked the four-year anniversary of the start of the conflict in Syria.
The war began after the government of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests. The conflict gradually took on a sectarian character, with members of the Sunni majority opposing the Shiite Alawites around the president. Outside powers began supporting various armed groups, and extremist organizations such as the al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State took advantage of the chaos, seizing large amounts of territory.
Millions of Syrians have been displaced as the war has dragged on, but humanitarian groups worry that the world’s attention has turned elsewhere.
In the secretary general’s own words in Japan last week: “There is no more painful example of the failure of collective action of the United Nations than the conflict in Syria, now in its fifth year. More than 220,000 people have been killed.”
Continue reading at:
Visualizing the 220000 lives lost in Syria - Washington Post
