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International Committee Of The Red Cross Releases Emotional Alternative Christmas Advert

International Committee Of The Red Cross Releases Emotional Alternative Christmas Advert

The International Committee of the Red Cross has released a Christmas advert highlighting there are 100,000 missing people due to conflict.

Mark Cunliffe

Mark Cunliffe

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has released an alternative Christmas advert to raise awareness of families who will be and have been separated due to conflict and violence.

Set in a war zone, the video highlights the distress that missing people and those separated from their loved ones face day-today due to conflict and natural disasters.

Rather than a happy and jolly advert centred around gifts the ICRC has gone for a more hard hitting and emotive advert which makes you contemplate how Christmas day is not as joyous for everyone.

The ICRC helps to reunite families who are missing members because of conflict or natural disasters which is what they chose to focus their Christmas campaign on this year.

At the beginning of the advert we see a battle-worn Santa taking cover behind a wall as gunfire opens up around him.

Santa, who let's be honest is usually depicted as visiting happy and cheery villages, looks visibly shocked to be in such a war-torn area.

Set in a war zone, the video highlights the distress that missing people go through. (
International Committee of the Red Cross)

His iconic red suit is filthy, his face is bleeding and his normally crisp white beard is covered in dirt.

The trailer follows Santa as he nervously makes his way around abandoned buildings while dodging bullets until he discovers a young girl who is missing from her family.

All she wants is to be reunited with her family a story very familiar to the ICRC, and to highlight the work the charity does the end of the advert sees the girl finally reunited with her family.

During the advert Santa finds a missing child in an abandoned building. (
International Committee of the Red Cross)

It reminds us all of the fact that, while most children around the world are excited for Christmas for its celebrations and gifts, hundreds more children are living a life complete different and are separated from their families by conflict, migration or natural disaster.

Currently the ICRC is looking for more than 100,000 people missing as a result of violence and conflict but that is just a fraction of the number of people missing worldwide.

The ICRC are looking for more than 100,000 people. (
International Committee of the Red Cross)

This is the highest caseload of separated families in 15 years and this year the ICRC has seen a sharp rise in families looking for loved ones in Syria, Myanmar and Nigeria.

Jenni Smout, communications manager at the ICRC, said: "We have been reconnecting families for over 150 years and it is some of the most important work we do... We love how [Adam & Eve/DDB] subverted festive tropes we're used to seeing from brands to remind us of the thousands of families around the world separated due to conflict, migration or natural disasters."

If you would like to help the International Committee of the Red Cross you can donate

Featured Image Credit: International Committee of the Red Cross

Topics: Life News, Real