Watch: What if Manhattan were Syria?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/watch-what-if-manhattan-were-syria/2014/12/17/7c53404d-4415-47f3-aa37-fb429df59ebb_story.html?wprss=rss_world

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The Hamdi Foundation, a charity operating in conjunction with UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, released a powerful YouTube video on Tuesday regarding the plight of Syria's millions of refugees.

It depicts New York City's usually bustling borough of Manhattan as a desolate, abandoned ruin — its crosswalk signals winking at no one, its subway cars empty of passengers. (To be sure, there appears to be one shot of the city taken from Brooklyn.)

"If the 1.5 million people living in Manhattan fled their homes," a caption in the video reads, "the world would notice."

There are more than 3 million registered Syrian refugees forced to live outside their country. A number double that size has been internally displaced by Syria's brutal civil war. Humanitarian organizations are desperately appealing for more aid, citing stark funding shortfalls.

This is not the first time an aid organization has used this rhetorical device to draw attention to the ravages of the Syrian conflict. Earlier this year, Save the Children issued a haunting video that imagined the life of a child in London whose world unravels the same way it has for millions of Syrian children.