Israeli killings of Palestinian children ‘an extremely dark place in history’, says UN

United Nations committee highlights serious Israeli violations of international human rights law through ‘indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks’ affecting Gaza children

By Sondos Asem
Sep. 19, 2024

A United Nations official on Thursday accused Israel of committing historically unprecedented violations against Palestinian children, including mass killings and arbitrary detentions.

“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), told reporters.

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

The CRC, which monitors compliance of state parties to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, on Thursday released its findings on six state parties to the treaty, including Israel, after a review during its latest session.

In its report, the committee said it was “greatly concerned about the high number of children in Gaza killed, maimed, injured, missing, displaced, orphaned and subjected to famine, malnutrition and disease” as a result of Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks”.

During UN hearings that preceded the report, Israel denied that its war on Gaza violated the treaty or international humanitarian law.

In addition to calling out Israel for killing Palestinian children, the CRC also expressed its concern about the “continued abduction, arbitrary arrest, and prolonged detention of large numbers of Palestinian children by Israeli forces, mostly without charge, trial or access to legal representation or contact with family members”.

It urged Israel to release all Palestinian children arbitrarily detained and halt the practice.

It also called on Israel to “abolish the institutionalised system of detention and the use of torture and ill-treatment against them at all stages of the judicial procedure”.

Last week, the health ministry in Gaza published the names of 710 Palestinian newborn babies killed by Israeli forces during the ongoing war.

They are among more than 16,700 Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks since last October, according to the Gaza-based government media office.

According to a report in June from the International Committee of the Red Cross, more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza as a result of Israel‘s assault on the enclave, either lost, disappeared, detained, buried under rubble or in mass graves.

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