US President Barack Obama has praised a 6-year-old boy who wrote to the White House offering to look after Syrian bombing victim Omran Daqneesh, whose bloodied image sitting in the back of an ambulance drew international condemnation earlier this year.

Speaking at the UN Leaders Summit on Refugees and Migrants in New York, Mr Obama said the boy’s letter “teaches us a lot” about “the humanity that a young child can display who hasn’t learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful of other people”.

In the letter addressed to Mr Obama and signed “Alex”, the boy says his sister Catherine will “be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him”, and he will teach Omran “addition and subtraction”.

“Park in the driveway or on the street and we’ll be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers and balloons,” the letter says.

“We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”

The video of Omran taken after he was pulled from the rubble of a house which had been hit in airstrikes, went viral in August, prompting calls for a ceasefire in the war-torn city of Aleppo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4992EwodB2k

It was later revealed that Omran’s older brother had been killed in the strikes.

Global leaders have been meeting in New York this week in an effort to find better international solutions to help deal with the 65.3 million displaced people around the world.

Despite criticism from the United Nations over the treatment of asylum seekers in detention, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton earlier used the summit to encourage leaders to look to Australia’s strict border control policies as a model for migration.