politics
How photos of children show the impact of global crises and make the world care
Published June 26, 2019
Photo: Mahmud Rslan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Photo: Carol Guzy/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed by US soldiers in 2005 in Tal Afar, Iraq. The US troops fired on the Hassan family's car when it unwittingly approached them during a dusk patrol.
Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images
The photo prompted widespread debate about rules of engagement with civilians. The New York Times reported that the US military asked the Getty Images photojournalist to leave his assignment after his pictures of Samar.
Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images
5-year-old Omran Daqneesh sits alone in an ambulance after a Syrian or Russian air strike struck the Qaterji neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, in 2016.
Photo: Mahmud Rslan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A year later, Omran's father appeared on state-run Syrian TV, saying the army restored order to the area. But it's not clear if those comments were made under duress.
Photo: Mahmud Rslan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman Richard Barnett holds an Iraqi child in 2003. Confused front-line crossfire ripped apart an Iraqi family after local soldiers apparently forced civilians toward US positions.
Photo: Damir Sagolj/Reuters
The 8-year Iraq War toppled Saddam Hussein but also cost more than 4,000 US soldiers' lives. Over 180,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by violence since the 2003 US-led invasion, according to Brown University estimates.
Photo: Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Children flee burning napalm during the Vietnam War in 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. The boy on the left, Phan Thanh Tam, lost an eye. His sister, 9-year-old Kim Phuc, ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing.
Photo: Nick Ut/AP
The image sparked outrage in the US, and some believe it helped hasten the end of the Vietnam War. In 2015, Kim Phuc told CNN she wants to be remembered not as a symbol of war, but as a symbol of peace.
Photo: Nick Ut/AP
Kosovar refugee Agim Shala, 2, is passed through a barbed wire fence to grandparents at a camp run by United Arab Emirates in Albania in 1999. Family members had fled during the Kosovo War.
Photo: Carol Guzy/The Washington Post/Getty Images
The Kosovo War ended about one month after this photo. The photojournalist later won a Pulitzer Prize for this image.
Photo: Carol Guzy/The Washington Post/Getty Images
The body of a 3-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in southern Turkey after a boat carrying refugees sank in 2015. More than 1 million Syrians have tried to escape violence against civilians in the country's ongoing civil war.
Photo: Nilufer Demir/AFP/Getty Images
The image sparked global awareness about the plight of Syrian refugees. But more than 3 years later, the Syrian civil war and humanitarian crisis continue.
Photo: Nilufer Demir/AFP/Getty Images
A 2-year-old Honduran girl cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US-Mexico border in June 2018. The asylum seekers were sent to a processing center for possible separation during the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on undocumented immigrants.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
Eight days after this photo, President Donald Trump responded to widespread criticism of "zero tolerance" and issued an executive order saying the US will try "to maintain family unity" when detaining parents and children.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
Angie Valeria, 23 months, and her father Oscar Alberto MartÃnez drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande in June 2019. The family from El Salvador waited for days at a squalid migrant camp to seek asylum at a US port of entry, Mexican media reported. But the father decided the conditions were too dire and tried to cross the river.
Photo: Julia Le Duc/AP