UN committee says horrific impact on children from Israel’s war on Gaza will have an ‘extremely dark place in history’.
A United Nations committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza have had a catastrophic impact on children and are among the worst violations in recent history.
More than 11,355 minors have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war triggered by Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7. More than 1,100 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed in the Hamas-led attacks and about 250 were taken captive. In response, Israel has waged a war in the besieged enclave, killing more than 41,000 people and reducing large swaths of the Palestinian territory to rubble.
“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chairperson of the committee, told reporters on Thursday.
“I don’t think we have seen before a violation that is so massive as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.
On top of the registered casualties by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, thousands of children are believed to be missing under the rubble, buried in unmarked graves or severely wounded by explosives, the British aid group Save the Children said in a report published in June.
According to an Al Jazeera tally in January – when the number of children killed by Israel’s war in Gaza was about 10,000 – one Palestinian child was being killed there every 15 minutes.
The 18-member UN committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, a widely adopted treaty that seeks to protect children from violence and other abuses.
Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the UN hearings in Geneva on September 3-4.
They argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the occupied West Bank but said Israel was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas and it does not target civilians but Palestinian fighters hide among them, which Hamas denies.
Civilians and health workers on the ground have repeatedly told Al Jazeera that attacks against homes with no warnings and no ongoing fighting have taken place since October 7 with entire families being obliterated in Israeli air attacks.
The committee praised Israel for attending the hearings but said it “deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations”.
In its conclusions, the committee called on Israel to provide urgent assistance to thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, provide support for orphans and allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.
The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally aim to comply.
During the hearings, the UN experts also asked many questions about Israeli children, including details about those taken captive by Hamas, to which Israel’s delegation gave extensive responses.
Sabine Tassa, the mother of a 17-year-old boy shot dead in the October 7 attacks, addressed the UN hearings and said child survivors were traumatised.
“The children of Israel are in an appalling state,” she said.