LPHR Child Rights Annual Report 2023 (additionally covering 1 January- 12 March 2024)
March 21, 2024
Palestinian medics treat children wounded by the Israeli bombing on Gaza at Shifa Hospital, on 9 October 2023
Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights start their extended 2023 Child Rights Annual Report with the upsurge in violations of children’s human rights:
LPHR has long-documented systematic and widespread violations of Palestinian children’s human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. An enormously intensified upsurge in grave violations against and affecting Palestinian children have been inflicted in 2023, and are ongoing into 2024.
Grave violation incidents and patterns are outlined in this Child Rights Annual Report 2023, which additionally covers the opening ten weeks of 2024. An overview immediately below clarifies the scope of exceptionally serious violations against Palestinian children:
- As of 12 March 2024, at least 31,184 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, with at least 12,550 of those killed being children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health figures. 36 Israeli children have been killed, according to Israeli authorities, the majority on 7 October. LPHR has consistently stated that the scale, speed and specific location of Palestinian civilian casualties raises extreme alarm that Israeli military forces are instituting a targeting policy in Gaza which clearly appears to violate the international humanitarian law principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack, amounting to apparent atrocity crimes.
- Children in Gaza are starting to die from malnutrition, dehydration and hunger, according to UN experts. As of 12 March 2024, at least 23 children are reported to have died of starvation and dehydration in Gaza. As the risk of famine rises, according to humanitarian officials, all children under five (335,000 children) are at high risk of severe malnutrition, with serious adverse impacts on their development and right to health. LPHR outlined in a legal briefing on 13 October that the Israeli government’s announcement of a siege policy on Gaza clearly appears to constitute the war crime of starvation against a civilian population.
- Children in Gaza have been maimed at a devastating rate. UNICEF reported in December that after ten weeks of conflict around 1,000 children in Gaza had lost one or both of their legs.
- UNICEF reported that as of 2 February 2024, at least 17,000 children are estimated to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents in Gaza.
- At least 90% of children under five are affected by one or more infectious diseases, and 70% have diarrhoea. Most water and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed or are otherwise non-operational or accessible, according to UN OCHA, putting children at increasing risk of deadly diseases.
- 144 children were killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank between 1 January 2023- 4 March 2024, the majority shot by Israeli forces using live ammunition, including a two-year-old boy, four-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy. A report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published on 13 February 2024 and examining the period between 1 November 2022- 31 October 2023, found that 84 children, 81 boys and three girls, were killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. At least 28 were hit above the waist, including 14 in the head, raising concerns that lethal force may have been used intentionally. The UN report found that in the vast majority of cases, use of force by Israeli security forces did not comply with the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality. LPHR’s Child Rights Bulletins have consistently documented the clearly apparent unlawful use of live ammunition against Palestinian children by Israeli forces with effective impunity.
- Four Palestinian children, aged between 11 and 15 years old, were killed when Israeli forces fired a missile from an Apache attack helicopter at a group of Palestinian civilians, most of them children, during a military incursion into Nour Shams refugee camp in the West Bank.
- Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces continue to report being subject to physical abuse, strip searches, threats and other ill-treatment. In July 2023, LPHR and Save the Children announced a landmark call for an immediate moratorium on Israeli authorities arresting, detaining and prosecuting Palestinian children, due to severe and pervasive harm being perpetrated against children within Israel’s military detention system.
- Two schools were destroyed by Israeli authorities in the West Bank, 140 schools have been destroyed or sustained major damage in Gaza, and access to education has been deprived to 625,000 children in Gaza since 7 October.
- In 2023 alone, a total of 1,152 Palestinians, including 575 children, were displaced in the West Bank when Israeli authorities demolished or forced them to demolish their homes citing lack of Israeli-issued building permits, which are almost impossible to obtain.