By Matteo Congregalli for VICE News.

When a young Kurdish man hosted in a temporary reception center in Milan started swiping through some pictures on his phone, one of the center’s staff members was shocked by what he saw. An image of a man hanging by his neck appeared on the screen. “This is my friend,” said the Kurd, with apathy in his voice.

Forty per cent of refugee children evaluated in the study had witnessed violence.

“They hanged him just because he was Kurdish,” recalls Massimo Chiodini, the coordinator of the center’s temporary shelter program. Two days later, the man tried unsuccessfully to take his life, jumping out of the window of his room on the second floor of the center.

He had fled Iraq. But he could not run away from the unbearable burden of the violence he had witnessed.