The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stated that children in the Gaza Strip cannot be protected while “bombs continue to fall from the sky.”
According to UNICEF spokesperson Louise Waterridge, there is no safe childhood in Gaza, and concerns about child labor in the Strip cannot be separated from the broader collapse of childhood itself.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, she added, “We see children who should be in classrooms, on playgrounds, with their families and friends, but instead, they find themselves forced to search daily for food, water, and medicine simply to survive.”
The spokesperson described a single day of life in this reality as “inhumane,” noting that children in Gaza have been living like this day after day, month after month, for over two and a half years. She concluded, “The horror has become completely normalized.”
The spokeswoman noted that the WHO reports could no longer keep up with the suffering; “Every time we write or report children who have been killed or injured, a new atrocity appears in just hours, and this happens even during the so-called ceasefire periods.” According to her, “Shock” today has become part of the childhood fabric itself, and the children are still stuck in an endless cycle of displacement, hunger, fear, disease, death and uncertainty, stressing that these children need protection and their homes.
