Thursday, April 25, 12:00 PM EDT - Zoom
Dead, Disabled, Displaced, Detained, Orphaned: The Toll of Israel’s War on Palestinian Children
Featuring Miranda Cleland, Defense for Children International-Palestine & Hamdi Shaqqura, Palestinian Center for Human Rights in conversation with 2023 FMEP Fellow Dr. Yara Asi
Israel’s war in Gaza and the increased violence in the West Bank - now known as the “Quiet War” - have affected Palestinian children in particularly horrific ways. Human rights researchers have documented these specific harms: Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 13,800 children, turned 19,000 into orphans, and made more than 1000 into amputees. More than 1 million children have lost their homes. Dozens of children have already starved to death, and up to 60% of the children in northern Gaza are experiencing acute malnourishment in a famine that is spreading at the fastest rate of starvation on record anywhere in the world, and which may constitute the war crime of deliberate starvation. As UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini put it, “This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future.” And in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian children continue to face arrest and detention, home demolitions and expulsions. Over the past six months, increased violence at the hands of the IDF and the IDF-backed settlers over the past six months has killed 117 Palestinian children.
In this webinar, public health expert Dr. Yara Asi will speak with experts from two premiere Palestinian human rights organizations: Hamdi Shaqqura from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based organization which continues to operate and collect data in Gaza even under the most difficult circumstances; and Miranda Cleland from Defense for Children International-Palestine, which focuses on the rights of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation.