Imagine you’re a small child hiding in a cellar in Houla or Homs as the shells rain down around the houses above and you can hear the bad men scurrying about searching for you and your family.
Think of the terror that child experiences, and then how much worse it gets when those men find where you are. In a few moments your family could be dead. In seconds, the whole life of that child as they have known it, is no more. All that is left is sheer terror and unbearable loss.
Save the Children is working with youngsters, helping them to recover both physically and mentally from the trauma of near civil war. Our teams are looking after the ones who’ve managed to escape Syria, making the dangerous journey across borders to get to safety.
We have created special centres, called Child Friendly Spaces, where, under the supervision of our staff, the youngsters can take the first steps to rebuild their lives. The stories we hear are heartbreaking. One six-year-old, a little girl, smiles as she plays with a ball. But the smile is an illusion. The staff there say she is so mentally scarred that she has not said one word since she left Syria three months ago.
There are many thousands of children inside Syria experiencing this terrible suffering. Yet most aid agencies, like Save the Children, are not able to get urgent help to those that are injured and traumatised.
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In this paper a few days ago, Lord Ashdown, a man who has seen, and had to deal with, his fair share of conflict, calls for humanitarian access to allow vital help from the outside world to reach those most in need. We stand ready to deploy immediately that this is possible and urge all sides to allow us and others unfettered humanitarian access.
But the killing also needs to stop. Even in war there are clear rules. Killing children and civilians is a crime. We are asking for people to sign our petition, calling on world leaders to put in place an immediate, legally binding Resolution to Protect Children.
The United Nations Security Council needs to pass this now. It would set out the concrete political measures to bring about an end to the violence, granting access for humanitarian agencies to reach the children injured and affected.
The resolution must re-state the rights of children to be protected from violence and make clear that all perpetrators of atrocities must be held to account for their crime.
The indiscriminate killing must stop now. The world cannot sit back and allow this to happen.
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Justin Forsyth is chief executive of Save the Children. More on the Stop the Killing campaign can be found at savethechildren.org.uk