The War On Childhood: From Gaza and Beyond

In Beit Lahiya, north Gaza, nobody knows if 10-month-old Shama survived the bombing of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the last week of December. Her tiny body pierced by shrapnel was being treated in one of the last surviving Intensive Care Units there.

In another camp, 10-year-old Razan, gripped by frequent bouts of anxiety, shudders and cries at every loud sound. She lost her left leg, both parents and three siblings to an airstrike by Israeli warplanes on north Gaza. Razan is just one of nearly 17,000 Wounded Children with No Surviving Family (WCNSF)바카라�unaccompanied or separated from their parents바카라�among the 1.7 million displaced people in Gaza.

Besides Gaza, a large number of children have also fallen victim to the escalating armed conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Congo, Yemen, Libya and Haiti. Over 473 million children바카라�more than one in six minors바카라�live in areas affected by conflict and more than 52 million children are estimated to be out of school. According to Unicef executive director Catherine Russell바카라�s year-end statement, 2024 was one of the worst years for children in conflict, both in terms of the number impacted and the level of impact. Children are caught in the middle of perpetual cycles of war and armed conflict. 바카라�This must not be the new normal. We cannot allow a generation of children to become collateral damage to the world바카라�s unchecked wars,바카라� Russell said. Around a third of the children in North Darfur, Sudan, face acute malnutrition in famine conditions, with nearly 74 per cent morbidity. Haiti has seen a 1,000 per cent increase in reported incidents of sexual violence against children so far this year. In all the war-affected countries, the destruction of school infrastructure has left millions of children without access to learning, and lack of access to nutrition and health services has caused outbreaks of measles and polio.

Owing to its history of violent cycles erupting at intervals over the past six decades, undermining international humanitarian laws, Gaza is witness to a lot of trauma. 바카라�Every child in Gaza holds a tragic story of grief and loss. They are scared and fearful,바카라� says Jonathan Crickx, Unicef바카라�s communications head overseeing the needs of children in the crisis. After more than 450 days of war, with no ceasefire in sight, he laments that children of all ages in Gaza are the worst victims who live through the unimaginable horrors of death and destruction.

Palestine is the most dangerous place for any human, including children, pregnant mothers, the disabled and the elderly. Every inch of the 370 km stretch of the occupied territory is a no-go zone, exposed to Israeli attacks at all times. The smell of death and despair is heavy everywhere in the rubble of the destroyed city and the makeshift tents, now threadbare with sheets of plastic.

Crickx saw absolute fear and panic in the eyes of the thousands of children he met during his field visits for a needs-assessment survey of the most vulnerable people in refugee camps. 바카라�They have all lost someone close바카라�siblings, friends, parents, teachers or neighbours바카라� and have seen their deaths up close.바카라�

Having witnessed the killings of loved ones and scores of dead and wounded bodies scattered everywhere, and their homes, schools, hospitals reduced to rubble, every Palestinian child has faced what no child should ever have to face. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 45,000 and continues to climb daily, with Israel바카라�s relentless war of retribution showing no signs of abatement. Among the dead are over 14,500 youngsters reportedly killed in Gaza, with thousands more believed to be buried under the rubble, while 1.1 million children, who make up more than half the population in Gaza, need urgent mental health and psychosocial support.

바카라�The war in Gaza is a war on childhood,바카라� says Juliette Touma, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) director of communications, based in Amman, Jordan. 바카라�The children of Gaza have known nothing but war. They have been under blockades since 2007. The repeated cycles of violence over the last 14 months have been the most atrocious and brutal for children. Their entire lives are shaped by wars, displacement and death. This is not a life for a child. Gaza is not a place for children.바카라�

In her two decades of service with the United Nations providing humanitarian and medical assistance to vulnerable refugees and children in conflict zones, Touma witnessed many horrific conditions of death and destruction. But she had never seen a war of this magnitude. 바카라�Working in Gaza poses a huge challenge for aid workers. Nearly 260 aid workers, including many of my colleagues, were killed in just one year. That has never happened before in the 75 years of the UNO바카라�s existence,바카라� Touma says, adding that the UN estimates it would take at least 14 years just to remove the unexploded ordnance from the rubble.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu바카라�s refusal to negotiate a ceasefire and the continuation of the deadly military campaign since Israel launched its aerial and ground invasion on October 7, 2023, has destroyed all the civil and medical infrastructure facilities necessary to keep the essential services running. There바카라�s no electricity, running water or sewage treatment. Out of the 36 hospitals, only 17 are functioning partially.

Tightened restrictions due to the blockade, which prevents the entry of commercial trucks, mean there is not enough fresh food, flour for bread, drinking water or concrete to build shelters. The 2.1 million people in Gaza have been living on bread, canned food and high-energy biscuits for the past 14 months. Earlier, around 500 commercial trucks were allowed to enter Gaza daily to deliver essential goods. But since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, only 60 to 70 trucks are allowed entry into Gaza, severely restricting the flow of supplies and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

바카라�There is absolutely nothing. The people of Gaza have no food and no shelter. Everywhere you see, there is just death, destruction and disease. This crisis is different. It is one of the worst situations we have ever seen. There바카라�s far from enough material for everyone,바카라� says a sombre Crickx. Long and intense efforts by the UN to provide urgent aid to the extremely vulnerable population through NGOs and local community leaders have forced aid workers to make extreme choices about who gets access to medical and essential supplies. Crickx and Touma repeatedly emphasise that it is impossible for normalcy to resume in Gaza without a long-term ceasefire.

While children are victims in most armed conflicts, they are also recruited to inflict harm on others as child soldiers. Children, particularly minor boys, make up as dutiful soldiers as they are easy to control and deceive in combat roles, as human shields and spies as well as in ancillary roles as labourers and cooks. In Africa, Uganda and Sierra Leone are infamous for brutal incidents in which children were forced to commit atrocities against each other. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka allegedly used minor females as suicide bombers.

Last year, the UN documented around 10,000 cases of child soldiers in Congo바카라�more than in any other country. After Congo, Myanmar in South Asia comes a close second with an estimated 50,000 child soldiers in government forces.

바카라�The practice of engaging children in combat continues to be a global phenomenon,바카라� says Jo Becker, advocacy director of the children바카라�s rights division at Human Rights Watch, even though the overall recruitment of child soldiers is seeing a downward trend. In the past 20 years, about 200,000 children were released or demobilised from the forces, according to UN estimates. 바카라�But it remains an ongoing problem,바카라� adds Becker, who has documented the recruitment and use of child soldiers for over three decades. 바카라�Children are exploited and targeted because they are vulnerable and displaced. Many of them are victims of exploitation and abduction. That바카라�s how they join the forces. Some experience extreme levels of violence and have no idea of what they are getting into.바카라�

Becker remembers a 11-year-old boy named Aung (name changed) whom she met at a relief camp in Thailand in one of the first international missions in the 1990s concerning Myanmar. Aung was recruited in the government army, the Tatmadaw, which had a bad reputation with no willing recruits and a high rate of desertion. 바카라�At the training camp, Aung was given a weapon that was taller than him,바카라� says Becker. 바카라�He was sent to combat when he was 12 years old. There he faced hostilities and hid behind a tree. As a 13-year-old, he saw his unit massacre a group of women and children. He couldn바카라�t take it anymore and fled, crossing the border to Thailand.바카라�

Social organisations and international NGOs, along with the UN agencies, have helped in disengaging and rehabilitating former child soldiers. These children have been reunited with their families, and provided with facilities for education and vocational training through rehabilitation programmes.

In places like Gaza, however, generations of children have been left to their fate. Three months after the ceasefire in the 2014 Gaza war, in which over 2,300 Gazans, including 503 children, were killed, war correspondent Hernán Zin entered the Strip to examine the experiences of children living under violence. In the award-winning documentary Born in Gaza, the Argentine-Italian filmmaker Zin follows the lives of 10 Palestinian children to explore how violence transformed their lives. The film refrains from depicting graphic violence or dead bodies, instead conveying the raw reality of war by allowing the children to share their stories in their own words.

The children narrate the consequences of war for themselves, their friends and their families, revealing the deep trauma they will carry forever. 바카라�We were eight kids on the beach. We came to play football. A missile was shot바카라�four of us were wounded, and four of our cousins got killed,바카라� says Hamada, his cousin Motassem (both 11 years old), desperately pleading, 바카라�I am like any other child. This is not a life for us.바카라� Six-year-old Bisan has deep burn wounds on her head after her house was bombed, killing her parents. 바카라�She doesn바카라�t talk to us about what happened. If anyone asks, she gets mad,바카라� says her cousin Haia. One after the other, the raw narratives of the children pierce through the screen.

바카라�We are all traumatised by the war. Suffering has driven people crazy,바카라� says Malak, a 13-year-old suffering from cancer, who lost her elder brother in the bombing. To forget the horrific memories, she draws and sketches in her leisure hour at school. 바카라�I wish there were no more wars. But I have a feeling there will be more,바카라� she says almost prophetically.

(This appeared in the print as 'Killer Angels')