SAVING SYRIA’S CHILDREN airs Saturday, Oct. 5 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
CBC News Network’sTHE PASSIONATE EYE presents SAVING SYRIA’S CHILDREN, a heart-wrenching look at the impact war is having on Syrian children. The documentary focuses on a group of school children who were hit by what’s believed to be an incendiary bomb in late August of this year, shortly after the infamous chemical attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.
As U.N. weapons inspectors begin the difficult process of identifying and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons, Saving Syria’s Children airs Saturday Oct. 5 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBC News Network.
Multi-award-winning filmmaker, Darren Conway and BBC reporter Ian Pannell witness the full brutality of the war in Syria as they exclusively document the aftermath of what’s believed to be an incendiary bomb attack on school children in northern Syria.
Following the work of two British doctors working for the medical charity, Hand in Hand for Syria, Conway and Pannell set out to show the depth of the humanitarian crisis in the north-west of the country and how the collapse of medical facilities is impacting on children’s lives. With almost no other Western film crews or aid agencies operating in rebel held areas, they present a unique record of how millions of internally displaced people and local civilians are living under fire.
What they find are kids with no school for two years, lacking immunizations and basic healthcare, babies born prematurely to stressed and undernourished mothers in refugee camps riven by typhoid, and the charity’s clinics bombed by government forces while they’re there. Five days after the chemical weapon attack in Damascus, while filming at a hospital near the border with Turkey, casualties from a nearby school started to pour in. Scores of children quickly overwhelm the makeshift ER, with their clothes and skin burning off.
Although it’s a war crime to use incendiary ordnance against civilians, there’s no outright ban, and little outcry when it happens. As the U.S. and Russia focus on preventing further use of chemical weapons, the war continues, and children continue to bear the brunt of this humanitarian catastrophe.
A link is available for media interested in screening this documentary.
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