‘An Extremely Dark Place in History’: UN Panel Says Israel Violated Child Rights Treaty

“I don’t think we have seen before, a violation that is so massive, as we are seeing in Gaza now,” said one committee leader.

By Jessica Corbett
Sep 19, 2024

A United Nations committee on Thursday called out Israel for “serious violations” of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly with its nearly yearlong assault on the Gaza Strip.

“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Guðbrandsson, vice chair of the U.N. Child Rights Committee, which also released its findings on five other parties to the global treaty—Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Mexico, and Turkmenistan.

Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 41,272 Palestinians in Gaza and injured another 95,551, according to local officials. Many more remain missing and are believed to be dead and buried in the rubble of bombed civilian infrastructure. The vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, often numerous times.

Earlier this week, the Gaza Health Ministry publicly identified 34,344 Palestinians who have been killed in the Hamas-governed enclave as of August 31. The document spans 649 pages, the first 14 of which are filled with the names of babies. In total, there are 11,355 children.

The U.N. report states that “the committee is gravely concerned about… the outrageously high number of children in Gaza who continue to be killed, maimed, injured, missing, displaced, orphaned, and subjected to famine, malnutrition, and disease, as well as the multiple displacements of the Gazan population, as a result of the state party’s indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Gaza using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas and its denial of humanitarian access, with at least 1 million children displaced, 21,000 children reported missing, 20,000 children who have lost one or both parents, 17,000 children unaccompanied or separated from their families in Gaza, dozens of child deaths due to malnutrition, and 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food.”

The panel also expressed alarm over “attacks on and destruction of hospitals, schools, residential buildings, refugee camps, and essential infrastructure, including power facilities and water tanks, by the armed forces, restricting access to health services, education, and housing for the nearly 1 million children living in Gaza.”

Guðbrandsson said that “I don’t think we can identify any measure that was taken to save children’s lives in this military operation in Gaza.”

“I don’t think we have seen before, a violation that is so massive, as we are seeing in Gaza now,” he noted. “These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see.”

As Reutersreported:

“Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, accused the committee of having a “politically-driven agenda,” in a statement sent by its diplomatic mission in Geneva.

It sent a large delegation to a series of U.N. hearings in Geneva in early September where they argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and said that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law.

It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers and that it does not target civilians but that the militants hide among them, which Hamas denies.”

Anne Skelton, chair of the U.N. committee, pushed back against Israel’s position on Thursday, telling journalists, “They were not, in our view, facing up to the reality that 17,000 children are dead and that there have been repeated attacks on schools and hospitals.”

The report also addresses Israel’s claims, saying that “the committee deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations under the convention in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) based on its position that the convention ‘does not apply… to areas beyond a state’s national territory’ and ‘was not designed to apply in situations of armed conflict,’ and that international humanitarian law is the relevant and specific applicable body of law in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”

“The committee also regrets the limited information it received on the situation of children living in the OPT due to such a position,” the 22-page “concluding observations” document continued. “The committee is of the view that the state party’s denial of the application of the convention cannot be used to justify its grave and persistent violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

The panel cited the International Court of Justice advisory opinion from July that found “international human rights instruments are applicable.” The ICJ—which has taken up a genocide case against Israel—also said at the time that the decadeslong Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must end “as rapidly as possible.”

The new report says that the Child Rights Committee, “aligning its position with the position of the ICJ, reiterates that the convention applies to all children at all times and is directly applicable in all territories over which the state party exercises effective control, and reminds the state party of its legal obligations both under the convention and international humanitarian law concerning children in the OPT.”

Skelton also argued that “the only real way to serve children’s rights in this situation is a cease-fire.”

However, Israel has shown no signs of ending its assault on the Palestinian enclave—in fact, fears of a wider regional conflict are heightened this week due to bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices across Lebanon, attacks supposedly targeting Hezbollah members that Israeli and U.S. officials attributed to Israel’s military and intelligence operatives.

The Child Rights Committee’s report follows U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres adding Israel to the so-called “List of Shame” of nations that kill and wound children during armed conflicts, a June decision that outraged Israeli officials but was praised by human rights advocates as long overdue.

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