Huge mega-billboards in New York & Tokyo show Syria’s ongoing crisis up-close | WNN – Women News Network

Huge mega-billboards in New York & Tokyo show Syria’s ongoing crisis up-close | WNN – Women News Network:

WNN/UN) New York, UNITED STATES, AMERICAS: The United Nations has drawn on the bustling energy of two of the world’s most fabled crossroads – New York City’s Times Square and Tokyo’s Shibuya crossing – to spotlight the ongoing struggle of besieged civilians trapped amid Syria’s civil war, launching a “flashmob” and simultaneously showing on the junctions’ mega-billboards the now-iconic photograph of thousands of people in a Damascus refugee camp waiting in line for food supplies. The massive international social media campaign led by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which ensures the well-being of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, culminated with last night’s simultaneous events on either side of the globe: in New York scores of people joined a flashmob vigil silently holding up pita bread to the gaunt figures on the giant screen above; in Tokyo, similarly enthusiastic crowds gathered.

A
gigantic viral photo image of displaced Palestinians in the Yarmouk
camp on the edge of Damascus, Syria amid severe devastation in the
background shows on skyscraper buildings’ with Reuters news mega
billboards in Times Square New York on March 20, 2014 as part of a UN
Relief and Works Agency campaign to bring attention to the crisis in
Syria. Mega billboards of the devastation in Syria is also showing
simultaneously in Tokyo, Japan. In both locations flashmobs gave a
silent vigil nod of respect to those who continue to suffer under the
ongoing Syrian crisis. Image: Smita Sharma/UNRWA