This Monday, November 20, the world commemorates World Children’s Day. But in many places, like Gaza, there is nothing to celebrate. There, organizations such as the WHO or Save the Children warn of the extreme situation in which minors find themselves: nearly 5,600 have died at the hands of the Israeli Army. Due to situations like this, human rights organizations are calling for an immediate ceasefire against minors in all conflict zones around the world.
They are images that have gone around the world. Those of 28 premature babies transferred from Al Shifa hospital, in the besieged north of the Gaza Strip, to Egypt. All in an attempt to save their lives because, before them, many others have died. The lack of resources and fuel in Gaza makes it impossible even for the incubators to be connected.
“All babies fight serious infections and continue to need health care,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday after announcing their arrival in Egypt.
“Without a ceasefire, babies’ lives will be in danger from the moment they are born,” the organization notes. Save The Children.
But this drama is not only affecting premature babies. This November 20, when World Children’s Day is celebrated, more than 5,500 children have died in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the Israeli Army. A figure that is higher than the annual average of all conflicts in the world combined since 2019.
“Without entering into discussions about the accuracy of the figures published by the ‘de facto’ authorities in Gaza, what is clear is that in a few weeks we have had thousands of children die,” said António Guterres, UN Secretary General, who He compared Gaza to a “children’s cemetery.”
On the occasion of World Children’s Day, the WHO has also taken the opportunity to send a reminder: one in five children in the world lives in conflict zones, many are victims of these. In 2022 alone, at least 8,630 minors were killed or maimed due to armed conflicts.
“In the face of wars that affect children around the world, we call again for a ceasefire, a return to the basics of humanitarian law and the thorough investigation by the competent authorities of all serious violations against children in the world. context of armed conflicts,” says the WHO.
For this reason, the organization has called for an end to the fire and other abuses – such as kidnappings or rapes of girls – against minors. To prevent children from being robbed of their right to childhood, as is currently happening in Gaza.
Do we all have the same right to be children?
In Gaza, beyond surviving the war – finding food and a low roof to shelter in –, many adults have a concern on their minds and a question that is repeated: how to ensure that constant violence does not rob people of their childhood. their children?
The methods they use are various. For example, the pediatrician – now displaced – Yusef Abu Saita tried to convince that the corpses they came across were just dolls that the Israelis had placed to try to scare them on their way to the Al Quds school in Rafah. Many of those corpses were children, like them.
According to calculations by the organization Save the Children, a child dies every 10 minutes in Gaza
Many minors live with the nostalgia of recovering what they lost. Like Razam, Yusef’s 14-year-old daughter, who remembers her house. She would like to go back there instead of her shelter’s camping tent.
“My favorite toy is a talking doll, which my father brought me from the pilgrimage when I was little. I loved her very much,” Razam tells the EFE agency about the lost toy, while remembering that her house “is no longer there.”
The Gaza health authorities have said it clearly. Many children show clear signs of post-traumatic stress after situations such as losing their parents, being rescued from rubble after days trapped, or suffering any other type of violence.
This is what 12-year-old Anas al-Mansi had to experience, while asleep in his house, a projectile hit in the middle of the night and killed his father and aunt.
“My father’s voice slowly faded away and I found myself buried under rubble and dust. “I called my father, but he didn’t answer (…) I knew they could kill him,” Anas told the media. ‘Al Jazeera’.
Anas is fortunate to have psychological assistance at the center where he is taking refuge, at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the center of the Gaza Strip. But not everyone has access to mental health services.
“How am I going to offer them psychological treatment? The only thing I can do is give them a place to sleep and try to give them some food and water, but treatment for psychological trauma is impossible. I myself need someone to treat me. I have I was afraid, afraid for my children, for me, for my family,” says Yusef.
Mental health experts also warn that psychological assistance is only the first step in treating trauma, something that is not usually overcome with years of mental assistance.
Child abuse in the West Bank
In Gaza there is a “clear violation of human rights. H H. of children” at all levels, according to the WHO. But in the West Bank too. Since the beginning of this year, Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 880 minors in the Palestinian region.
“The operations against Palestinian children in the West Bank are part of a type of systematic detentions applied by Israel that have been harmful and devastating over generations,” highlights the Commission for Former Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Club.
It’s nothing new. Palestinians in the area have already denounced this practice in recent decades, as well as the lack of a fair trial for those Palestinians who are detained and forcibly taken to Israel, where they spend years locked up. Currently, there is no type of control to prevent abusive behavior by the state of Israel towards minors.
In addition, the West Bank is experiencing its greatest spiral of violence since the Second Intifada, which ended in 2005. In 2023 alone, 426 citizens have already died, including 85 minors, in the raids that occur almost daily in the area.
Dead children in the rubble, in hospital morgues or lying in the streets. They are painful but true images. They are the reality of childhood in 2023 in the Gaza Strip and, to a lesser extent, in the West Bank.
Children, without even knowing it, are on the front line and are the first victims of this conflict that for the moment shows no signs of ending.
With EFE and local media
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