Sadly inspired by the images of a 3 year old migrant child drowned, washed up and lying face down on a shore in Turkey. Alongside retrievers found the body of the child’s brother – together with a burst plastic boat. Who knows how many more lives were lost?

The picture, released by a Turkish news agency, is trending worldwide on Twitter under the #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (“humanity washed ashore”) hashtag.

See the BBC online article here

According to a June report, nearly 60 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes at the end of 2014, 19.5 million of whom were refugees (up from 16.7 million in the previous year). Half of those refugees were children.

Sadly, there isn’t an end to the crisis in sight, due in large part to conflicts in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. There are currently more than 4 million Syrian refugees displaced throughout various countries, not including more than 7.6 million people internally displaced within the country. In July, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres called them “the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation,” while the number of global refugees and internally displaced people is at its highest point since World War II.

The piece I’ve written is called:

Your Child

Still lifeless unrested dead
Your child lies face down with the waves gently lapping upon his head
His expressionless face no longer shows jest
We’ll never know the struggle for breath he faced

As politicians argue about his mothers destination
We’re all guilty about the same procrastination
X thousand to one Y thousand to none
Brother can you spare me some

No blood, just white no tears just plight
No story to tell just his mother & father nowhere in sight
Yet they are everywhere
In all the faces that dare

Plastic support on waves that crush
They came from a world that was hushed
War torn with no way out
Your child took to the sea wayward bound

Your child is here in body & wandering spirit
Asking for your mercy to treat it
Saying enough is enough – Saying let me sleep
Open your borders open them now It is time for peace

Categories: 2015, Pause for thought, Poetry, Political comment