NEW YORK: Top names in music including Metallica and Rihanna joined leaders on Saturday in a concert that brought promises of action to support refugees and improve sanitation in the developing world.

The Global Citizen Festival, broadcast live from the vast lawn of New York’s Central Park, distributes tickets to fans who commit to petitions and other actions aimed at ending extreme poverty.

Interspersing performances from some of the world’s most sought-after artists with rapid speeches and videos, the fifth edition of the festival put a special focus on solidarity with refugees amid the mass exodus from war-ravaged Syria.

In one of the evening’s more unlikely stars, a six-year-old New York boy named Alex took the stage, waving with precocious grace. Alex recently wrote a letter to Obama asking him to bring “the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria” to his home, promising to care for him. He was referring to five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, who was filmed dazed, bloodied and covered in dust after being rescued from the rubble of his family’s home last month.

Published in Dawn September 26th, 2016