All international conventions prioritize the safety of women and children in conflict zones.
According to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols, children "shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected against any form of indecent assault," and the parties involved in a conflict must provide them with "the care and aid they require."
Despite all international humanitarian laws, every 10 minutes, a child is killed in Gaza.
Due to the indiscriminate attacks by Israeli forces using more than seventy thousand tonnes of bombs on civilian settlements in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, countless innocent civilians have been killed.
The Gaza Strip covers only 365 square kilometers, and in just eight months, Israel has dropped more bombs on this small territory with a population of 2.2 million than were dropped on London, Hamburg, and Dresden during World War II.
Today, Gaza is, in the words of UN representatives, "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child". There is nowhere safe for women and children in Gaza, where mothers have to write their children's names on their hands so they can be identified in case they are killed or injured by Israeli bombs. In Gaza, children are in a perpetual nightmare from which they never wake up.
Children and women, who make up two thirds of the people killed, pay the heaviest price of the Israeli attacks.
Children living in Gaza do not have any of the rights enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. At least 15,700 of the 38,098 people who died in Gaza were children, excluding nearly 4,000 children trapped under rubble, whose bodies could not even be recovered.
In fact, the number of children killed by Israel in Gaza between October 7 and February 29 was more than the total number of children killed in wars worldwide in the last four years.
Children in Palestine are not protected from Israeli attacks. On the contrary, they are targeted deliberately.
On January 24, 2024, in Khan Younis, Israeli snipers shot Nahid Adel Barbakh, who was looking for food with his brother. When Ramiz, his older brother, tried to save him, the snipers shot him as well. Their only crime was being Palestinian children.
Save the Children, a UK-based international non-governmental organization, reported that nearly 21,000 children in Gaza were buried separately from their families in unmarked graves, under rubble, or in mass graves.
As of July 2024, seven mass graves, in which hundreds of children are buried, have been uncovered in Gaza. According to Save the Children, UN experts report that many of the children's bodies found in these mass graves show signs of torture, some may even have been buried alive.
On May 27, 2024, defying the International Court of Justice's call to halt the attacks in Rafah, Israel bombed a United Nations refugee camp, which had previously been declared a "safe zone" by Israeli authorities.
More than 8 rockets weighing 900 kilograms were dropped on the tents that homed hundreds of displaced Palestinians, especially children. UN experts reported that people got trapped in their tents and were burnt alive. The explosion caused the victims' bodies to be dismembered.
Israeli forces intentionally target Gaza's healthcare facilities, destroying hospitals and ambulances and denying 1.1 million Palestinian children access to healthcare.
Al-Nasr Children's Hospital was bombed and raided by Israeli soldiers in November 2024. Doctors were forced to evacuate, leaving all patients behind. Although Israeli forces promised that the babies in intensive care would be under their protection, reporters who went to the hospital several days after the raid only found the decomposing bodies of 5 babies.
Due to the lack of adequate medical facilities, thousands of children who could have been treated under normal conditions had their limbs amputated without anesthesia. As of July 2024, the number of amputee children is over 3,000.
Moreover, due to the Israeli government's refusal to allow humanitarian aid into the area, there is a shortage of food and clean drinking water in Gaza.
Roughly 3,500 children are in critical condition due to malnutrition and dehydration.
In the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, "the trickle of assistance does not meet the ocean of need" in Gaza.
The deliberate killing of babies and children by Israeli forces and the destruction of all means of survival for them is evidence of ethnic cleansing.
According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, all countries are obligated to prevent genocide.
Nations that do not take a stand against this brutal genocide are complicit. The atrocities in Gaza, the world's largest children's cemetery, will never be forgotten.
