UNICEF: Gaza’s children cannot be protected while bombs are falling on them policy

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said children in the Gaza Strip cannot be protected while “bombs are still falling from the sky.”

According to the organization’s spokeswoman, Louise Waterridge, there is no safe childhood in Gaza, and concern about child labor in the Strip cannot be separated from the broader collapse of childhood itself.

She added in an interview with Al Jazeera, “We see children who should have been in the classroom, on the playgrounds, and with their families and friends, but instead, they find themselves forced daily to search for food, water, and medicine just to survive.”

The spokeswoman for the United Nations considered that one day of life in this reality is “inhumane,” and that the children of Gaza have been living like this day after day and month after month for more than two and a half years. She said: “Horror has become completely normalized.”

Bombs are falling

The spokeswoman indicated that the organization’s reports are no longer able to keep pace with the extent of the suffering. “Every time we write or report on children being killed or injured, a new atrocity emerges within just hours, and this happens even during so-called ceasefire periods.”

According to her, “trauma” today has become part of the fabric of childhood itself, and children are still stuck in an endless cycle of displacement, hunger, fear, disease, death, and uncertainty, stressing that these children need protection and their homes.

The UNICEF spokeswoman continues by saying that it cannot provide protection for children while “bombs are still falling from the sky,” and that children cannot be returned to school if there are no schools, if there is no safety, and if resources and supplies are limited.

She added that UNICEF is doing everything it can for children and families in the Gaza Strip, but that is not enough. “The population is now crowded into only 40% of the Strip’s area, and the health situation is deteriorating and dangerous to the point that rats are biting children while they are sleeping at night.”

She stressed that no humanitarian response can be a substitute for the safety that children need, stopping violence, the flow of aid, and restoring life-saving services, adding, “The children of Gaza need their childhood restored.”

According to the Information Unit of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, 21,638 children were martyred during the last war, a rate of approximately 30% of the total martyrs, and more than 45,000 children were injured, including about a thousand who had their limbs amputated.

Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, as of last April 20, reveal that 19,61 male and female students were martyred, and 28,337 others were wounded, in addition to 801 martyrs and 3,291 wounded among educational personnel. While 179 government schools were destroyed, bombing and vandalism affected 105 schools belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).