Israeli crimes in Gaza constitute 'psychological terrorism': UN expert
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Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, has highlighted the severe impact of the ongoing war on the mental health of Gaza's residents.
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Palestinian children injured in an Israeli airstrike await treatment at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on October 17, 2023. (AFP)
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, stated that the Israeli attacks and crimes in the Gaza Strip amount to "psychological terrorism" and are part of a genocidal plan.
She noted that the mental health of Gaza's residents has significantly deteriorated due to the ongoing war.
Mofokeng warned that anxiety and trauma levels among the residents of Gaza have reached abnormal levels, as access to healthcare and treatment services has worsened.
She lamented the plight of "an entire generation of children in Gaza who died or barely survived even before they received their birth certificates."
She emphasized, “We have disappointed the generation in Gaza. If we cannot stop the bombs from falling today, what future, what generation are we talking about?”
625,000 school-aged Gaza children struggling with severe trauma: UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has lately announced that more than 625,000 school-aged children in Gaza are experiencing severe trauma due to the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s head, shared on the X platform on Wednesday that Palestinian children in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have faced immense losses since the onset of Israeli aggression in Gaza nearly a year ago.
“While nearly 625,000 deeply traumatized girls and boys are out of school and living in the rubble in Gaza, many children in the West Bank suffer from escalating violence that disrupts their lives and education,” Lazzarini stated.
UNRWA expressed alarm over a concerning increase in malnutrition, disease, and mortality rates nearly a year into the ongoing aggression.
The agency noted that even before the outbreak of war on Gaza, many families struggled to ensure proper nutrition for their young children as they prepared for their first year of school.
Gaza genocide could set youth back five years
Additionally, a recent report released by UNRWA warned that the ongoing war in Gaza could delay children and young people's education by up to five years, risking the emergence of a lost generation of permanently traumatized Palestinian youth.
“Children have seen that the international community will sit idly by as they are killed. This has left them with questions about values that schools and learning aim to instill around humanitarian principles that teachers will have to navigate,” the report stated.
Since August, UNRWA has been providing educational services in shelters, benefiting around 8,000 children.
However, the report stresses that substantial additional efforts are needed to address significant learning losses, which were already worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, prior to the Israeli aggression on Gaza.
A recent analysis indicated that only 3.5% of the aid allocated for Gaza has been directed towards education, despite a critical appeal from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Satellite imagery examined by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster shows that over 90 percent of schools have suffered damage, with many classified as irreparable.
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