(Save the Children) – It’s been about two years since 11-year-old Iraqi refugee Samer* has been held by his mother, or played with his four brothers. He has never met his new baby sister. “I miss them so much,” he says, sad eyes on the concrete floor of his temporary home in sprawling Al Hol camp in the northeast of neighbouring Syria, about 200km west of Mosul. Along with thousands of other Iraqis, Samer took a dangerous journey to escape ISIS – even a dirty, polluted camp in Syria is a safe haven after the brutality of life under the terror group. Now living in an unpainted, and as yet unheated, breeze-block shelter with two small rooms, he shyly peers at me as he tells the agonising story of his separation from family.
