Syria refugee crisis - special report
Special report: More than 11,000 children have now died in the Syrian civil war and hundreds of thousands more face a bleak future, but work by international charities is giving them hope.
There are 1.1 million children living as refugees, 300,000 not receiving an education and more than 70,000 living without fathers as a result of the Syrian war.
For the children there, avoiding bomb blasts is a day to day occurrence.
"My cousin, she's five years old. She couldn't jump that fast... so she fell down and died,” one young girl told me.
She was wounded in the same attack, in the leg and hand.
It is an all-too familiar scenario for the children of Syria, but just across the border in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp, the children are safe.
"I've heard stories about torturing in front of their eyes, of their families, their relatives, their colleagues dying, bodies in the streets,” Maha Hawashin from World Vision said.
One child spoke of how he saw his teacher shot dead at the school gates.
It is atrocities like that which mean children are missing out on years of education.
That boy now learns at a school run by World Vision in Irbid, northern Jordan.
While there are just a few at that school, it is estimated that a million child refugees are being helped by international charities.
They talk of going home, rebuilding homes, and families, but the scars of war run deep.
“It's the generation of fear, traumatised children, out of school... this is what I most fear, of the future,” Maha Hawashin said.
Mel's series of special reports on the Syria refugee crisis will continue on 7News and Sunrise throughout the week.
