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Bana Al Abed was born in Syria in 2009. When she was 2 years old, people in her country started protesting to remove the government. They felt that leaders did not give people enough freedom. In response, the government used violence in attempts to stop the protests and a civil war broke out.
Since 2011, the war continued to escalate and has turned into one of the worst crises in the world today. Bana experienced the effects of this horrible war first-hand. She wanted to capture the attention of people in other countries to tell them what was happening and urge them to help. So she asked her mother to help her set up a Twitter account to document their experiences.
Bana showed people how her family was running low on food and water, eating just macaroni and rice, and feeling constantly hungry. She showed videos of the bombs being dropped and people running around in fright. And eventually she recorded when her family lost their home in an air strike. This led them to join thousands of residents who boarded green buses and left the city of Aleppo to leave Syria behind in search of a safer life in Turkey.
Bana considered herself one of the lucky people, to escape the war and not lose any of her family. But knowing there were people in Syria still living what Bana had gone through left her feeling uneasy. Bana wanted to continue spreading the word. In addition to her Twitter account, she wrote two books about her experiences, called ‘Dear World: My Story of War, My Plea for Peace’ and ‘My Name Is Bana’.
She has also made speeches to important people around the world on the need to educate refugees and children in Syria. Her biggest speech to date was to 1,500 people, including important politicians in Dubai. Bana dreams of a world in which all children can live in peace and have the right to education. She says, ‘I hope [to] make the world do something for the children and people of Syria and bring peace to children all over the world who are living in war.’
