Children's stories feature imaginative places with fantastical characters. While these worlds of wonder can bring delight to young audiences, there are some stories never meant for children.

That’s the message in the animated series “Unfairy Tales,” which chronicles the true stories of three of the eight million children whose lives are in ruins because of the Syrian conflict.

“Unfairy Tales” juxtaposes stunning animations with terrifying narrations of events. The series highlights tragedies that are beyond what any human should experience, much less a child.

UNICEF spoke with hundreds of refugees, to hear their tragic stories, first-hand, in their own words. The challenge was to tastefully turn their gruesome, gut-wrenching stories into delicate art pieces through narration and a visual style fitting of their testimony. The campaign uses the lightness of classic children’s stories to undercut the very real, very tragic stories that these children are facing every day. Through a variety of animation styles and across a wide range of different mediums, we were able to engage people all over the world in a new conversation, amplified by coverage on some of the biggest news channels in the world. The campaign was launched at the Syrian Donor Conference with the presence of Malala Yousafzai and the British prime-minister David Cameron, and on CNN International.

UNICEF is starting to change the conversation around the youngest refugees. They are often seen as threats to their host countries, leading to their stigmatization and marginalization, in turn making their transition and acceptance into other countries difficult. Through the campaign, these children’s voices were heard by more than half billion people across 176 countries, leading to not only widespread exposure, but a widening of perspectives. News stories and social comments in response to the campaign (i.e. “I want to adopt Mustafah”) show a major attitude shift in terms of accepting/helping these kids.

To engage migrant communities, as well as larger host communities, “Malak and the Boat” shows the realities of being a child refugee in an unsuspecting way through impressive animation visualizations.

These films highlight the human stories and experiences of the young refugees, migrants, and those welcoming them, ultimately garnering a sense of solidarity both amongst refugee and migrant communities as well as larger host communities.

The series promoted UNICEF's involvement in the Supporting Syria & The Region conference in London co-hosted by the world leaders of the UK, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, and the United Nations. More than 70 countries, international organisations, NGOs, civil society, and the private sector attended. Additionally "Unfairy Tales" introduced their global initiative #actofhumanity to fight xenophobia.

UNICEF leveraged public relations efforts to place the videos amongst coverage of the world news within key markets affected by the refugee crisis.

Now in its fifth year, the Syrian crisis has caused 2.4 million Syrian children to be displaced, and has left a total of eight million children in need of aid.

As the world’s leader in humanitarian aid for children, UNICEF has been working tirelessly to secure the protection and rights of these Syrian children.

The campaign objective is to help destigmatize refugees in neighboring countries and reinforce UNICEF’s global “children are children” strategy that profiles what the refugee crisis means for children.