The world has turned blind to the plight of refugee children, according to a Maltese aid worker who contributed to the Help is Coming video, which has gone viral.

Karl Schembri's interviews with child refugees have been included in the video fronted by actor Benedict Cumberbatch. The video has been donated to Save the Children for fundraising.

“Seeing those young children again, two years since I interviewed them in Zaatari Camp in Jordan, made me realise how blind the world has been to the plight of these people. Only now, because they've started reaching Europe - and that's just a tiny fraction of them - European leaders started to panic," Mr Schembri told timesofmalta.com.

A writer and former journalist, Mr Schembri is now the Norwegian Refugee Council's regional media advisor in the Middle East.

Mr Schembri (right), who was assistant producer of the video, said: “I remember this soft-spoken girl telling me how her family escaped from Syria while air strikes destroyed their neighbourhood."

"Now I know what the word 'refugee' means' a young child told me. I wish we never came to this world and saw this, another one said."

Until four years ago, these children dreamt of becoming doctors, teachers, pilots or engineers, Mr Schembri said, adding that they made it painfully clear to him how normal their lives were until the unthinkable happened.

“It could happen to anyone of us.”

Mr Schembri said: “Hospitals, schools, mosques and churches, nothing is spared in Syria. There is no such a thing as a safe area, their only option is to flee. Over the last four years, four million refugees fled for safety in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. These countries are now past breaking point and Europe has to be united in helping them with aid, treating the refugees in Europe with dignity and exercising all its political influence to end the conflict. So far it's the people, not politicians, who have lived up to Europe's values of humanity and solidarity.”

World-renowned actor Cumberbatch recorded the introduction to the charity single for the refugee crisis - a re-issue of the Crowded House song Help Is Coming. Watch Mr Schembri's interviews included in the video above.