As with most wars, however, the real faces and stories of the Syrian conflict belong to the children and families unlucky enough to get caught up in others' violence.
On Friday, according to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees and UNICEF, the one millionth child refugee fled Syria since the uprising began in March 2011.
This comes just two days after the White House expressed "deep concern" over the alleged use of chemical weapons near Damascus and called for unrestricted access to the site for UN investigators. Reuters quoted sources in Syria who estimated 500 to 1,000 dead by poison gas used by the Assad regime.
For perspective, one million children is roughly equivalent to all the children of Boston and Los Angeles combined. These children stream across the Syrian border daily, leaving their homes, schools, friends, and everything they've ever known to seek one thing: safety.
According to UNICEF and the UNHCR, 740,000 of those children are younger than 11, and 3,500 children so far have arrived in Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq from Syria without their parents.
As the conflict rages into its third year, according to the UNHCR and UNICEF, the civil war has killed 7,000 children inside the country. (The Violations Documentation Center in Syria puts the number at 7,400.) Anthony Lake, UNICEF's executive director, said it's important to see beyond the numbers. Every child, he said, is "a real child ripped from home, maybe even from a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend."
