UNICEF: 700,000 children in Gaza displaced, 'left everything behind'
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Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territories, calls the UN's inaction its 'most epic failure' as the children of Gaza remain displaced in the most dire humanitarian conditions.
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Wounded Palestinian children receive treatment at the al-Shifa hospital following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, central Gaza Strip on Oct. 23, 2023. (AP)
The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) declared on social media platform X that over 700,000 children in Gaza are displaced and have been “forced to leave everything behind”, as it urged for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and “sustained and unimpeded access to provide assistance.”
UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Director Adele Khodr said on Friday, “Children in Gaza are hanging by a thread, particularly in the north,” adding, “Thousands and thousands of children remain in northern Gaza as hostilities intensify. These children have nowhere to go and are at extreme risk.”
In Gaza, more than 700,000 children have been displaced - forced to leave everything behind.
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) November 13, 2023
As humanitarian needs grow, UNICEF calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, for sustained and unimpeded access to provide assistance and safe release of all abducted children. pic.twitter.com/J2KaKjGSqB
“We call for the attacks on health care facilities to stop immediately and for the urgent delivery of fuel and medical supplies to hospitals across all Gaza, including the northern parts of the Strip,” UNICEF continued.
This comes after UNICEF warned last week of the increasing risk of disease spread in Gaza, which “particularly threatens children” as a result of dire humanitarian and sanitation conditions.
Read next: UN Human Rights director resigns over UN's inaction in Gaza genocide
'International community almost completely paralyzed'
The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that a child is killed on average every 10 minutes in Gaza with “nowhere and no one is safe” under Israeli airstrikes.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territories, condemned the international community for failing to put an end to “the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people” by “Israel”.
“In the face of all of this, the international community is almost completely paralyzed,” she said in an address to the National Press Club on Tuesday”, while calling the UN's response and action “its most epic failure.”
“I am being generous when I say the UN is experiencing its most epic political and humanitarian failure since its creation,” she noted.
“Individual member states, especially in the West, and Australia is no exception, are on the margins. Muttering notable words of condemnation for Israel’s success at best or staying silent in fear of restraining Israel’s … claimed right to self-defense. Whatever that means.”
Israeli right to self-defense 'non-existent'
Albanese insisted that the legal view of “Israel’s” right to so-called self-defense was “non-existent”, as it neglected the law of proportionality in its “unrelenting bombardment of Gaza.”
“Israel cannot claim the right of self-defense against a threat that emanates from a territory it occupies, from a territory that is under belligerent occupation,” she said, adding: “What is being done (in Gaza) is wrong … How many more people need to die?”
Palestinian people, she underlined, have long endured a “violent structure of dispossession, confiscation of land, and forcible displacement” way before the Israeli attack on October 7, and argued that it has exceeded being “just a war crime, it is a crime against humanity,”
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory “must end”, she highlighted, and is “apartheid by default”.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in a presser in Geneva on Tuesday that "Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children," adding, "It's a living hell for everyone else." He noted that more than 3,450 children have died in Gaza since October 7.
