Ramallah, August 6, 2025 – Most children do not spend their childhood considering the state of their human rights. Yet, for Palestinian children in Gaza, such consideration is unavoidable, as they find themselves amid a genocide, and the lives and rights they once enjoyed continue to deteriorate.
In collaboration with Maastricht University, Defense for Children International – Palestine interviewed four children living in Gaza about the status of their rights. Overwhelmingly and without hesitation, each child readily stated that they had no rights. Highlighting their lack of access to shelter, healthcare, food, water, and education, each child described how their most basic human rights have been stripped from them and their families by Israel’s genocide.
Deprivation of Shelter
Since October 7, 2023, Palestinian children have undergone systemic and continual forced displacement, leaving them without access to adequate or safe shelter. “Right now, we have nothing, just our tent,” said 14-year-old Jana. “Every couple of days we’re displaced from one tent to another. Our social ties are gone. If we get to know someone in a new place, we’re afraid to play with them outside. We’re scared — if we go out and there’s a bombing nearby, we could get shrapnel injuries. We move to areas where we don’t know anyone, no community, nothing familiar, just the tent. Our whole day is spent in queues, two hours or more to get clean water, two hours more for salty water. Even to use the bathroom, we wait over two hours. Our day is wasted. I don’t even have time to rest. We can’t go on like this.” This displacement is constant as families attempt to find safety in a place devoid of safety. “[T]he army surrounded us,” recalled 16-year-old Ramez. “We had nowhere to go. Either we move toward death, or we stay and risk dying. Either way, it’s death.”
Displacement is accompanied by direct targeting from Israeli forces, who openly harass or beat Palestinians seeking shelter. “We were terrified,” recalled 16-year-old Sumaya. “[W]e moved on foot, which was extremely difficult, especially for me. I was dragging a bicycle loaded with belongings through sand. We kept walking . . . and saw people who had thrown away everything they owned under Israeli pressure. We saw tanks next to us. The tanks began to chase us to scare us into walking faster. We were running through sand mixed with flour, and our feet sank in it. The tanks were scaring us as if they were going to run us over.”
Israel forces regularly target children fleeing shelters, often directly after ordering civilians to evacuate an area, as Ramez and his family experienced:
One time we were in Jabalia camp. The army came and said coldly, “You have to leave.” We said, “Why should we leave the camp?” Then they started firing smoke bombs at us. They dropped leaflets. People began comforting themselves, saying maybe it’s just psychological warfare. Then came zero hour. We grabbed our belongings and got in the car — thank God we had a car. [T]hey started firing bursts of bullets into the walls to terrify people, to create panic. But [they] told us to evacuate, and we listened. So why the intimidation? I mean, I’m 16, I can somewhat understand and cope with fear. But with us was my little sister. She had a psychological breakdown. She started yelling, “Dad, they’re shooting! We’re going to die!” My dad kept trying to calm her down, saying, “It’s okay, it’s just intimidation fire.” We were trying to reach a house, and she kept insisting, “Dad, we’re going to die.” I kept trying to act tough. I’m a kid, but I pretended I wasn’t scared. My dad told us, “You boys, don’t show fear in front of your younger sisters.”
Deprivation of Healthcare
Living in displacement is fraught with poor health conditions and with hygiene products included in the aid that Israel has blocked from entering Gaza, infections and disease run rampant among the already vulnerable Palestinian population. “If one of us gets a virus, it spreads to the whole family,” Jana explains. “I wear a mask in the tent, so I don’t infect my little siblings. I can’t sleep at night because of the itching and fever. Dad stays up with me all night. Mom applies compresses. We can’t sleep.” Amidst this displacement, children have no access to healthcare. Children face burns, shrapnel or bullet wounds, dismemberment, disease and acute malnutrition – all without access to aid, health care or medical supplies. “Right now, there are sick children who get hit and there’s no one to treat them,” Ramez said. “They die from bleeding because no one can help them. I saw incidents at the hospital — the patient would arrive, bleeding on the bed, and the doctor would say, ‘I swear I can’t do anything for you.’ And it’s true — the doctor literally couldn’t help because there were no resources, nothing to work with. There are no resources at all because of the Israeli occupation, the closing of the borders, the blockade.” For Palestinian children, it is clear that their right to health has deteriorated past the point of existence. Sumaya, who contracted Jaundice while sheltering in a classroom with three other families, explained, “The right to health doesn’t exist. Even when hospitals ask for help from abroad, the occupation refuses to allow medicine in. I believe their goal is to kill the sick, children, and nurses.”
Deprivation of Food and Water
The Palestinian children who have survived Israeli fire, bombs and the lack of medical treatment, are simultaneously facing a different threat: starvation. Israel has illegally used starvation as a method of warfare throughout its genocide, but in March 2025, Israel implemented its most severe deprivation of food, blocking any aid from entering Gaza for over 11 weeks. “Now, nothing is available for us children or even for the elderly,” shared the young Tamer. Even upon Israel allowing some aid to reenter Gaza, the aid was minuscule in the face of the starvation facing the population. “Now it’s just one meal a day,” shared Jana. “Even canned food like beans and peas are expensive. Pasta too, we now mix it with flour because flour is unavailable. Dad works an entire week just to get one batch of dough, and we mix it with expensive pasta to make it last. All night my siblings and I were crying, and my mom and dad cried for us because of the hunger and misery we’re living in. We’re sick of this life—we don’t want to live this life anymore. We don’t know how to live. We are alive and dead at the same time.”
Infants and newborns are dying within months of their birth and mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed their babies. Every child in Gaza is facing starvation, including Sumaya:
The right to food is violated. Before the war, my father worked and provided for us, so food was available. But after the war . . . I became the only one providing for my family. If I bring money, they can eat. If I don’t, there’s nothing to eat. I’m the sole provider after my brothers were martyred. Last night, flour was brought in through the Zikim crossing and dropped off in a far area at 2 a.m. We hadn’t eaten bread for a week. Around 3 or 4 a.m., I left with my brother and father. My father dropped us off at a point, and we continued on foot. We asked someone if there was still flour, and they said yes. We kept walking, hoping to find it. When we reached the place, we heard people say the trucks dumped the flour on the ground and left. I didn’t find any at first but kept searching. Someone told us there was flour inside a house. I entered with the crowd and begged for flour. Suddenly, they uncovered a pit filled with flour. Men went down to get it. I begged for some. It was crowded and hot. Someone tried to steal my flour. An old man claimed I was with him to take my bag. Still, I managed to get seven kilos and shared it with three other young men who helped me carry it partway. Then I walked alone, with the bag on my shoulder and a metal rod in my hand to defend myself in case someone tried to rob me, because people carrying flour often get attacked. I carried that rod for protection. My brother got lost on the way, and I had to leave him behind to save the flour. It was more precious than gold to us.
Now, in partnership with American mercenaries, the Israeli government has begun distributing what it describes as aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). In reality, this aid, which contains no hygiene or medical products, is not only nutritionally insufficient, but must be collected by aid-seekers, automatically excluding anyone unable to travel, including children, from receiving aid. Herded into fenced distribution sites, GHF aid sites have become deadly, as Israeli forces have targeted and killed hundreds of aid-seekers, including children. Toddlers trampled to death, children shot while fetching potable water by Israeli forces, and outbreaks of violence among desperate aid-seekers are all-too-common scenes resulting from this sham of an aid organization. As Ramez describes,” Even with the so-called U.S. aid – you know that show where they throw food into the jungle and people get shot trying to get it? That’s us now. In Rafah and Netzarim, they place the aid pallets, and people run to grab food while the army shoots at them. Whoever gets it, eats. We’re living the law of the jungle—people kill each other for food. All because of the Israeli army. They treat us worse than dogs—throwing food, letting us fight for it. Ninety percent chance you’ll die trying to get food; ten percent chance you’ll survive. That’s what opening aid looks like.”
This systemic deprivation of life-sustaining resources also applies to potable water. While potable water in Gaza has long been controlled by private companies, after the 7th of October, Israel targeted Gaza’s desalination plants, wells, and prevented water from being brought into Gaza. Now, Gaza’s population is left with contaminated water. “We used regular water for everything—drinking, washing, everything,” Sumaya shares. “The water is contaminated. My brother had stomach pain from it. There was no treatment, no access to hospitals, no healthcare. When our neighbor’s son went to fetch water, he was killed by the occupation.” In direct contradiction to international law, and its role as an occupying power, Israel continues to deprive Palestinians of their right to water, blocking access to their natural resources and contaminating Gaza’s only aquifer with overextraction. “If the army opens [the valve], we get water—not healthy, but drinkable,” says Ramez. “They bomb the pipelines and prevent repairs. It’s systematic extermination. Drinking water comes from a filtered source, but it’s not really filtered. The salinity is 21%. I saw the test myself. The occupation blocks imports. No filters are allowed in Gaza. What can we do? It’s a choice between bad water or worse.”
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Deprivation of Education
An entire generation of Palestinian children have had irreparable damage to their education, as Israel has decimated Gaza’s educational infrastructure. Children are left without access to continue their educational pursuits. Ramez, who used to be a top student, hasn’t been to school in two years and misses “holding a pen.” Sumaya believes children have forgotten everything they have learned. Young Tamer, states that there is “no good food for intelligence, brain and thinking.” According to Jana, despite her efforts to continue her education online, has found several challenges to obtaining her right to an education. “There’s . . . only online education, and they’re just mocking us with it. There’s no real studying. Teachers send cards . . . but there’s no internet to even use it—unless we sit in a sunny area. But we can’t handle the sun. There might be volunteers running a school in our area, not accredited by the Ministry or anything. I went to register several times, maybe for a year now, but they always tell me there’s no room. Everyone’s on the waitlist. Even when I try to study in my free time, the sound of drones prevents me from concentrating.”
Deprivation of the right to life
For the thousands of children in Gaza, both recorded and unrecorded, their right to life has been horrifically ripped away. For those still alive, their lives resemble death, as Israel has ensured through its policies and tactics that continually and flagrantly violate international law. “My right to life is completely denied,” said Sumaya. “We could have died at any moment. If we made any move, the soldier could have shot us without caring.” These children are enduring trauma that will affect their entire generation and remain in the collective memory of the Palestinian people forever. “We’ve been sitting like this for two years, nothing but water and the tent,” shared Jana. “Nothing else. We’re under mental pressure from the Israeli army, the tent, displacement, water, fire, viruses in the air, garbage without disposal, sewage – all of these things affect us. Two days ago, a nearby house was bombed. The kids screamed. The whole family was wiped from the civil registry, all dead. I saw them burning and screaming. I haven’t been able to sleep since.”
Israel has ensured that Palestinians who remain in Gaza are devoid of any life-sustaining resources while they face the constant threat of being shot or bombed by Israeli forces, and children bear the brunt of this policy, as Ramez explained. “They’ve stripped us of every right, especially the right to life, and safety. We don’t live in safety. As a Palestinian child living in Gaza, I’m telling you: we don’t feel safe. I could be talking to you now and a little later I become a ‘news item.’ I go home and maybe find my brother, father, or mother dead. This is our reality. What can I say? Today might be yours — the next hour might not. The situation is catastrophic – catastrophic beyond words.”
Israel has enacted its genocide openly and blatantly in front of the world, with entrenched impunity. Built to anchor power to colonialist and imperialist states, the international legal and political systems that are supposedly designed to prevent and punish those who conduct genocide are not working. The truth of the matter is that Western nations and hundreds of businesses and corporations all profit from Israel’s actions and have for decades. It is not in the interest of the powerful to hold Israel to account. It is the Palestinian children of Gaza who bear the torture of that reality. It is clear that our current rules-based system refuses to hold to account a state that flagrantly violates international law, openly conducts genocide, and calls for the destruction of the Palestinian people. It is equally clear that the only remedy to realising the rights of Palestinian children is to deconstruct the systems of power that enable their violation. It must be through collective international action that we hold these institutions accountable and demand that all states adhere to their obligations under international law. Palestinian children must not be the exception to these ideals.
These stories were also published by Children’s Rights Research.