Unwra makes photo ‘error’
THE UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees has apologised after it published a picture of a child in wartorn Syria alongside a claim that she was from Gaza as part of its Ramadan charity appeal on behalf of residents of the Strip.
In Facebook and Twitter advertisements, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (Unwra) used a picture of a young girl standing in front of a bombed out house.
“Imagine being cut off from the world — for your whole life,” the ad read. “That’s reality for children like Aya. The blockade of Gaza began when she was a baby, the occupation in the West Bank before her parents were born. Now she is 11, and the blockade goes on.
“Aya’s childhood memories are of conflict and hardship, walls she cannot escape, and the fear that the only home she knows, however tiny, could be gone when she returns from school.
“This Ramadan, please help support children like Aya who have known nothing but conflict and hardship.”
However, it was pointed out that Unwra had tweeted the image back in 2015, in reference to a story on Syria. The image was also used in an Unwra report on the Syria conflict with a caption about the girl standing “in the rubble of Qabr Essit, near Damascus”.
In a statement published on the organisation’s website, Unwra said: “We mistakenly posted an image from our archive of a child in Syria and had said that the child was in Gaza.”
The statement went on to say that the picture had been replaced.