A Syrian child's wish as the number of refugees tops the million mark The number of children who have fled the conflict has now topped the one million mark. That according to the United Nations is half the total of those fleeing Syria while about three-quarters of those children are under the age of 11. The country is in danger of losing a generation believes Antonio Guterres the UN HIgh Commissioner for Refugees. "We can really talk of the enormous risk of Syria facing the problem of a lost generation," he told reporters at a press conference and added, "We don't have the conditions to be able to guarantee all the refugees not only the answer to their needs but also the integral respect to their dignity which is an essential question." Only about a tenth of the refugees are able to get some form of education while a fifth of them have already undergone counselling. The numbers of young people now living in the camps is equivalent to the population of children in Wales. One nine-year-old refugee voiced the desperate hopes of many when he said: "I want to return to Syria to live in peace and to go back to school. I want to be able to play with my old friends again, just like before. I want our country to be safe, safe enough to live in and for it to be prosperous again. In Syria about two million children have been displaced and, according to the UN are often attacked or recruited as fighters in a conflict which it says has caused the world's worst refugee crisis for 20 years. More about: Protection of children, Refugees, Syria, UNICEF