A senior UNICEF official warned Thursday that Gaza City, the last refuge in northern Gaza, is turning into a place “where childhood cannot survive.”
Of UNICEF's 92 outpatient nutrition treatment centers in Gaza City, she pointed out that just 44 are still operational, denying thousands of undernourished children vital assistance.
"Gaza City, the last refuge for families in the northern Gaza Strip, is fast becoming a place where childhood cannot survive. It is a city of fear, flight, and funerals,"
UNICEF Communications Manager for the Middle East and North Africa Tess Ingram told reporters virtually from the Gaza Strip during a news conference.
"The unthinkable is not looming; it is already here,"
Ingram said, warning:
"The escalation is underway."
She detailed harrowing encounters with families forced to flee multiple times and said:
"I met children who were separated from their parents in that chaos. Mothers whose children have died of starvation. Mothers who fear their children will be next. I've spoken to kids in hospital beds, their small bodies shredded by shrapnel."
As a result of the breakdown of vital services, Ingram cautioned, Gaza's youngest and most vulnerable people are "fighting for survival."
She emphasized that UNICEF has been responding and that in the last two weeks, the organization has given more than 3,000 severely malnourished children ready-to-use therapeutic food.
Ingram emphasized that efforts are still considerably less than what is required, though.
"Our team is doing everything in its power to help children. But we could do far more, reach every child here, if our operations on the ground were enabled at scale and we were well funded,"
she added.
Palestinian life, she said, is "being dismantled here, steadily but surely."
Ingram emphasized that "the suffering of children in the Gaza Strip is not accidental. It is the direct consequence of choices that have turned Gaza City and indeed the entire Strip into a place where people's lives are under attack, from every angle, every day."
She also asked the international community "to use their leverage to end this," reiterating UNICEF's appeal for Israel to reassess its rules of engagement in order to safeguard children under international humanitarian law. "When, if not now?"
UNICEF needs $716 million for its Gaza response this year, but only 39% of it is financed, and just 17% of it is for nutrition, Ingram continued.
She claimed she had grieved with moms in Gaza and told them,
"I'm so sorry that the world has failed you,"
in response to a question on the human toll of her work. Your children have been let down by the world.
"The cost of inaction will be measured in the lives of children buried in rubble, wasted by hunger, and silenced before they even had a chance to speak,"
she said.
What are the threats that make Gaza City unsafe for children
today according to UNICEF?
Gaza's water and sanitation infrastructure has been
devastated by attacks and, as such, water production capacity is very low at
only 26%, forcing families to drink contaminated water which poses risks for
children with water-borne diseases and increased skin conditions such as
rashes.
UNICEF also reported that the famine crisis is also worsening, and nearly 19,000 children were recently reported to be hospitalized for acute malnutrition. Access to foods providing nourishment is a threat to child survival and development.
Much of the current displaced population lives in some of
the worst conditions with unprotected exposure to the cold, wet weather
underneath improvised tents. Some children are highly vulnerable when the
temperature drops, exposure can lead to illness and discomfort.