One-fifth of world’s children live amid armed conflicts

While I wish everyone a happy new year, especially children, I am constrained to write about the dire plight of children living in areas of armed conflict, specifically in Palestine’s now devastated Gaza Strip.

There are other wars going on, in places that we hardly hear about: the Central African Republic, the Sudan, Haiti, Yemen. And of course, Ukraine.

More than 473 million young people, nearly one-fifth of all children in the world, suffer from the worst level of violence since World War II (1939-1945). This, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), as lucidly reported by The Guardian.

The percentage of children living in war zones, Unicef said, has doubled from about 10 percent in the 1990s to almost 19 percent today. This should not become the “new normal,” it warned. Yet, with more conflicts raging around the world than at any time since 1945, children increasingly become the major victims.

In 2023, Unicef verified a record 32,990 “grave violations” against 22,557 children. The number of those forcibly displaced reached 47.2 million. These are the highest figures since 20 years ago, when the UN Security Council mandated monitoring of the impact of wars on the world’s children.

Take, for instance, Israel’s horrible war on Gaza, ongoing for nearly 15 months. It stemmed from the Palestinian armed group Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 2,500 mostly Israeli civilians. Instantly, Israel’s armed forces retaliated, pursuing Hamas combatants in Gaza, where the latter held sway. The death toll, verified by the UN, was placed at 45,000-plus Palestinians. Of these, 44 percent were children.

On New Year’s Day, Israeli air strikes killed at least 12 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.

One strike hit a home in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, the most isolated and heavily devastated part of the Strip on which Israeli bombings and ground offensives have focused since October. A woman and four children were among those killed. Another strike overnight on a refugee camp in Central Gaza also killed a woman and a child.

“Are you celebrating?” asked a man carrying a child’s lifeless body amid the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.  Addressing the Israeli authorities, he cried out, “Enjoy as we die. For a year and a half, we have been dying.”

The widespread devastation by the sustained bombings and ground troop offensives have displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s nearly three million population.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, in a recent report,  himself described the besieging and targeting of hospitals using explosive weaponry, the killing of hundreds of medical workers and the destruction of “critical life-saving equipment.” In certain circumstances, he noted, the attacks could “amount to war crimes.” But Israel has kept denying such an accusation.

Turk cites findings of “blatant disregard” for international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights law. “The one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became death traps,” he said, referring to hospitals that should not be targeted in war.

Consistently, Israel’s military tried to justify its attacks on hospitals by accusing Hamas of using them as command posts. But these are only vague assertions, according to Turk.

There has been international intervention. Acting positively on a suit filed by South Africa, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had earlier issued a warrant of arrest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. The latter, however, has resigned following disagreements with Netanyahu over the atrocious conduct of the war.

Back to the Unicef, its executive director, Catherine Russel, wrote in a broad-range report:

“By almost every measure, 2024 has been one of the worst years on record for children in conflict in Unicef’s history – both in terms of the number of children affected and the level of impact on their lives. A child growing up in a conflict zone is far more likely to be out of school, malnourished or forced from their home – too often repeatedly – compared with a child living in places of peace.”

“This must not be the new normal,” Russel emphasized. “We cannot allow a generation of children to become collateral damage to the world’s unchecked wars.”

In particular, Unicef called attention to the plight of women and girls, amid widespread reports of rape and sexual violence in conflicts. Likewise, it pointed out the following:

• Children were especially affected by malnutrition in times of war, deemed as a particularly lethal threat not only in Gaza but also in Sudan;

• More than half a million people in five conflict-affected countries are in famine;

• Conflict also seriously affects children’s access to health care and education;

• Forty percent of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children live in countries wholly or partly affected by conflict, rendering them far more vulnerable to  outbreaks of diseases such as measles and polio;

• Polio was detected in Gaza in July, the first time the virus appeared there in 25 years;

• A UN-led vaccination campaign, enabled by a series of temporary and partial ceasefires, managed to reach more than 90 percent of the child population worldwide;

• More than 52 million children in conflict-affected countries were deprived of education;

• The impact on children’s mental health is huge: a War Child study last month reported 96 percent of children in Gaza felt that their death was imminent. Because of the trauma they underwent, almost half of them wanted to die.

Children in war zones face a daily struggle for survival that deprives them of childhood, Unicef’s Russel lamented. “Their schools are bombed, homes destroyed and families torn apart. They lose not only their safety and access to basic life-sustaining necessities, but also their chance to play, to learn and to simply be children.”

Enjoining everyone concerned to act, she said: “The world is failing these children. As we look toward 2025, we must do more to turn the tide and save and improve the lives of these children.”