They say a picture has the power of a thousand words. Over the years, journalists, photo journalists, editors and news publications have published images that many have deemed shocking. Media houses have copped flak at times, while on other occasions there has been consensus that the images in question needed to be shown.

Some of the ones in recent memory include the young child who was being followed by a vulture and who died soon after the photographer shot the photo, the young girl running naked in a street in Vietnam, her skin peeling off after being burned in a napalm strike. Others included the man who opted to jump from the World Trade Centre in New York, rather than being burned to death in the inferno that ensued in the 11 September attacks.

And that brings us to the image we are discussing today, that of a small Syrian boy, who washed up on the shores of Turkey after the latest migrant tragedy. Our front page’s headline today reads: “Shame on all of us”. By this we mean that not only have Europe’s politicians failed, in terms of not coming up with a plan to help refugees so desperate that they will risk it all, but also all of us, as a human race.

Not since the dark days of Nazi Germany have we seen so many people displaced by the horrors they face at home. While we bicker, politically, as well as in terms of “we are too full”, two boys and their mother washed up on the shore. In our country, children play on the shore and build sandcastles. These two boys will only be building sandcastles in the sky, their lives snatched from them so prematurely.

The social media sparked a debate about whether the image should have been published or not. We believe it needed to be published, both on our online platform and also here, in our print edition.

We did not seek to publish the photograph for shock value. We published it because we believe it needs to be seen to foster more understanding of the magnitude of this phenomenon that the world is going through.

We published it so that those who say that these people should be left to drown at sea can see for themselves what that would really mean.

We published it because the world needs to see what is going on in the Mediterranean.

That could have been anyone’s child. It could have been yours.

For those who believe that this is not our problem, we urge them to think how they would feel if that child was their son, their nephew, their grandchild, their family friend.  We believe that no one should even have to try and put the shoe on the other foot. We believe that any photograph of a dead child, washed up on the shores of the country they had just left in the hope of finding a better life, is enough to jar the emotions and to evoke sincere anguish, anger and guilt.

The decision to publish the photo was not taken lightly. Such decisions never are. To return to the story of the starving child and the vulture, the photo journalist who took that shot was a 33 year old covering the famine in Sudan in 1993. He was told not to touch the children for fear of transmitting disease. He took that shot and left.

Kevin Carter committed suicide in 1994, wracked by the guilt of the famine and death he had seen in Africa.