WARNING: Contains graphic content.
Social media can be a powerful tool, particularly when put in the hand of a young girl with the power to make us see the harsh, horrifying realities of war.
Seven-year-old Bana Alabed lives in the Syrian capital of Aleppo with her mother, Fatemah, and her brothers. Her home is a war zone; the epicentre of the Syrian civil war that has caused unforeseen carnage and one of the biggest refugee crises in history.
Bana wants you to understand the pain, fear and tragedy she sees everyday so she takes to Twitter to show the world what it’s like to live in a war zone.
Her tweets range from the heart-breaking to the graphic.
She shares the true realities of war, uncensored.
Bana reports on the fraught situation as she watches the outside world crumble around her home.
She often asks the world for our help, aid and prayers too.
Her desperate pleas are harrowing, when you really grasp who and where these tweets are coming from.
At last count, Bana has over 13,000 followers who watch on in horror as this brave young girl narrates the political upheaval and consequential violence between Sunni militants and the Syrian government.
Sometimes Fatemah, her mother, tweets poignant political messages and cries for help from her daughter’s account.
Bana puts it well when she says in a Twitter video, ‘I hate war. And the world has forgotten us.’
So let’s not forget this young girl and her family.
They are afraid and tired, but most importantly they are bravely surviving horrors that most of us will never come close to understanding.
So please don’t ignore her tweets. Share them. Raise awareness. Help people understand that the war in Syria is affecting daughters, mothers and brothers who just want peace for their families.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.