The Power Of Social Media

Social media has played a huge part in Europe’s “Refugee Crisis.” Social media has been central to so many stories, social media is the reason many people became involved in supporting refugees and social media is also the reason many refugees found their way in the safest way possible to a new life in Europe.

 

Social media has also been a place to share the harsh and violent realities of the refugee journey. From pictures of dying children in Syria to pictures of drowned children in the Aegean facebook became flooded with horrific images to the point that now these images have become so normalised we have become numb to what we are seeing. I know that until this morning I very much had.

 
Of course every picture of a dead or dying child is heartbreaking but when you are faced with a newsfeed full of horrific images on a daily basis you begin to filter out what you are seeing. This is a sad reality, perhaps a coping mechanism but all the same a sad fact that you have seen so much it no longer shocks you.

 
But this morning I woke and reached for my phone to feed my daily social media addiction when I was faced with an image of a dying child. But for the first time in a while this picture I did not filter, this picture was not just another dying child but a dying child with a face I recognised. I did not feel numb upon seeing this picture, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.

 
The first time I saw this face was a few months ago. The first time I saw this face was when I peeled back the blanket this child was wrapped in by the shore when he first arrived in Europe. The first time I saw this face it was blue, unresponsive, still. The first time I saw this face I thought he was dead, but he was still with us, just.

 
I have seen many things on these shores, I have met so many people and experienced so many unimaginable situations yet the image of the little boys face wrapped up in that blanket is one that has never left me.

 
That morning, which still feels like yesterday, I spoke with the child’s parents and it turned out that this child had a serious undiagnosed medical condition, around a year before this point he had just stopped responding. He had been a normal, happy child and then all of a sudden he could no longer move, could no longer smile and could barely breathe. For the family, they had no idea what had happened to their son but their priority was to try and get him to Europe to save him.

 
Last night I was catching up with volunteer friends and we were talking about families we had met on these beaches and some had news of the new lives of those who had managed to travel through Europe before the borders closed. It reminded me of so many families I’d met here and made me wonder what had happened to them.

 
Then this morning I found out what had happened to this particular family.

 
After I left the young boy to get medical attention and in the care of UNHCR and other NGO’s I never saw him again. I had checked in to find out what had happened after he had been to hospital on the island and although he had serious medical conditions, he had survived and they were doing what they could for him, but then I never heard what happened next. I assumed his case had been taken on by UNHCR and that they would have tried to find him medical support and they would support the family in their next steps in Europe. This family arrived after the Balkan route had closed so they were essentially stuck in Greece, however in special cases families can be relocated and I had hoped this had happened. Although a part of me had seen how sick this child was and did not know if the trauma of this journey was something he would survive. I thought I would never know what happened to the little boy whose face is firmly placed in my memories.

 
This morning, I saw this little face again in a social media campaign by volunteers in a camp near the Greek/FYROM border. This time I saw this little face lying on the floor of a tent in a camp where he has been since he left the island. The campaign was begging for a specialist doctor because the boy was dying and they did not think he would survive much longer. I met this child in February, it is now almost June. He has been living in a tent in an outside camp all this time and has been unable to access specialist medical care.

 
Now he is the face of a social media post about a dying child.

 
I don’t know how this family have ended up in this situation. I don’t know how they have been surviving in the makeshift border camps which have terrible living conditions. I don’t know how they have kept this child alive or why they have not had access to the medical support they needed. I don’t know what happened between the day I first saw that face to this morning when I saw it again but all I know is that somewhere along the line this child was let down.

 
Could I have done more? I don’t know, perhaps. Should the agencies that came into contact with this family have done more? Absolutely. Should this child have ever been denied the chance of a better quality of life because of EU Policies and closed borders? Absolutely not.

 
I don’t know now how this story will end but I hope the next time I see this face it will not be as another picture of a dead child. I hope the next time I see this face, it is a picture of a smiling family who have received the help they need for their sick child but I believe the reality here is that it is too late.

 
This child is not the only child with a story like this. I read stories like this often and many with very sad endings. Seeing this has reminded me that each picture of a dead or dying child has a story, it should not be filtered, I should not allow myself to be numbed to this.

 

 

With the difficulties now facing those who want to support refugees, with the political situation, with hotspots, with an environment that forces us to decide whether we are humanitarians, activists or a personal balance of both,  I fear we are looking at the big picture but forgetting the individuals caught up in this mess. We are losing our focus. We are forgetting about the people we came here to support.

 

 

I am still trying to find where I fit in this new situation but today I got a stark reminder of the human side of this crisis.

 

 

I have seen the power of social media in highlighting emergencies and getting help to those in need, I just hope social media uses it’s power today to support this child and his family before it is too late.