Gaza - At Least 17,000 Children are Unaccompanied or Separated from their Families : Jonathan Crickx
Jonathan Crickx, said Friday that the number of unaccompanied children — “each one a heartbreaking story of loss and grief” — was an estimate, since the current security and humanitarian conditions made it nearly impossible to fully verify.
“Behind each of these statistics is a child who is coming to terms with this horrible new reality,” he added in a statement following a trip to Gaza.
In a conflict, members of an extended family often take in children who have been separated from their parents, including those who have been orphaned, he noted. But shortages of food, water and shelter in Gaza have made it so that the extended families of unaccompanied children are often “struggling to cater for their own children” and unable to care for another, he added.
Children account for about 40% of the 27,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to authorities in Gaza and international organizations.
Given the scale of Israeli bombardment in Gaza, some parents have spread their children out, splitting them up and sending them to relatives in different parts of the Gaza Strip to try to increase their odds of survival. Others have taken to scrawling names directly onto their children’s skin, in case they are lost, orphaned or killed and need to be identified.
Gaza’s hospitals have treated so many wounded children arriving alone for treatment after Israeli airstrikes that medical workers earlier in the war coined a new abbreviation, WCNSF: “Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.”
Crickx said the war had also severely affected the mental health of children in Gaza. Before Oct. 7, UNICEF estimated that more than 500,000 children there needed help with their mental and emotional well-being. Now, Crickx said, nearly all of the estimated 1.2 million children in Gaza need it.
Children were showing symptoms of “extremely high levels of persistent anxiety,” he said, adding that many can’t sleep and “have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings.”
“Behind each of these statistics is a child who is coming to terms with this horrible new reality,” he added in a statement following a trip to Gaza.
In a conflict, members of an extended family often take in children who have been separated from their parents, including those who have been orphaned, he noted. But shortages of food, water and shelter in Gaza have made it so that the extended families of unaccompanied children are often “struggling to cater for their own children” and unable to care for another, he added.
Children account for about 40% of the 27,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to authorities in Gaza and international organizations.
Given the scale of Israeli bombardment in Gaza, some parents have spread their children out, splitting them up and sending them to relatives in different parts of the Gaza Strip to try to increase their odds of survival. Others have taken to scrawling names directly onto their children’s skin, in case they are lost, orphaned or killed and need to be identified.
Gaza’s hospitals have treated so many wounded children arriving alone for treatment after Israeli airstrikes that medical workers earlier in the war coined a new abbreviation, WCNSF: “Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.”
Crickx said the war had also severely affected the mental health of children in Gaza. Before Oct. 7, UNICEF estimated that more than 500,000 children there needed help with their mental and emotional well-being. Now, Crickx said, nearly all of the estimated 1.2 million children in Gaza need it.
Children were showing symptoms of “extremely high levels of persistent anxiety,” he said, adding that many can’t sleep and “have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings.”
sad but true... the world watches helplessly as the poweers debate on who is accountable.
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