Syrian teen pleads for ‘a chance’

the hague — A Syrian teenager made a strong plea on Monday for the world to give refugees fleeing his country’s war an opportunity, as he received the prestigious International Children’s Peace Prize in The Hague.

“We just want people to give us a chance to prove ourselves,” Mohamad Al Jounde said.

“I can promise you, we are people just like them, we live in the same world,” Jounde said, as he was handed the award at a gala ceremony, in a medieval hall in the Dutch capital.

The 16-year-old’s words came after yet another wave of Syrian air strikes killed at least 25 civilians and wounded dozens across the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus on Sunday, a Britain-based monitor said.

“Mohamad receives the award for his tireless efforts to ensure the rights of Syrian refugee children,” competition organisers KidsRights Foundation said. The energetic boy, along with his family, built a school for 200 refugee children in a refugee camp in Lebanon where he taught maths, English and his passion, photography.

“My message to people who don’t want refugees to be there is we didn’t want to come either. But that’s what war does,” said Jounde, who now lives in Sweden with his mother and father.

“Start dealing with us as normal people, not as refugees or immigrants,” he said. —