Marwan: 4-Year-Old Syrian Refugee Found Wandering Desert Alone, Reunited With Family
A 4-year-old Syrian refugee named Marwan was discovered wandering the desert alone in Jordan after being separated from his mother, but the story has a happy ending.
A group of humanitarian workers with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees found the wayward boy, who was walking alone and carrying a small plastic bag. He had been walking with his family near the border between Syria and Jordan when he somehow was separated from them, but continued on his way.
Andrew Harper, a UNHCR representative to Jordan, shared a picture of 4-year-old Marwan on Twitter, showing the tiny boy lost among the expansive desert.
“Marwan was safely reunited w his mother soon after being carried across the #Jordan border,” Harper tweeted.
The United States has been increasingly vocal about the Syrian civil war. This week, US Secretary of State John Kerry called out Syrian president Bashar Assad for stalling the peace process.
“The regime stonewalled,” Kerry said during a stop in Jakarta. “They did nothing except continue to drop barrel bombs on their own people and continue to destroy their own country. And I regret to say they are doing so with increased support from Iran, from Hezbollah and from Russia.
“Russia needs to be a part of the solution,” Kerry continued, “and not be contributing so many more weapons and so much more aid that they are in effect enabling Assad to double-down, which is creating an enormous problem.”
Pressure is coming from other nations as well. Last week a coalition of nations that included Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations General Assembly to address Syrian war crimes, according to a report by Kuwait News Agency.
The request cited a “growing evidence of war crimes.”
The Syrian conflict has created more than one million child refugees, though 4-year-old Marwan was lucky. Reports said that humanitarian workers were able to reunite the boy with his family.
