UNICEF: Desperate Situation For Gaza's 1 Million Children

Forbes

4 days ago

Children in Gaza are enduring catastrophic living conditions, including severe food insecurity and malnutrition. UNICEF is ready to deliver urgently needed supplies and calling for safe and unrestricted access. Here's how you can help.
Thirteen-year-old Fadi risks his life to bring home food from a non-UN distribution site for his mother and siblings. 'Even though it's very dangerous, I have to go [to the site] to get food for my mother so that my brothers and I can survive," Fadi says. "I rushed there to get a food basket. My father was killed, and I have no one to help my family.'
Across the Gaza Strip, every day, families are facing unimaginable challenges and choices. With almost no aid allowed in, and food prices soaring, parents and children are risking their lives to get even small amounts of food or safe water. Many are walking for hours, waiting in crowds and dodging dangerous air strikes and gunfire — only to return empty-handed.
Some don't return at all.
Between May 27 and July 7, the UN Human Rights Office recorded the killings of 798 Palestinian civilians — including children — desperate to find food, at or near distribution sites and humanitarian convoys.
'These children are not combatants. They are being killed and maimed as they line up for lifesaving food and medicine.'
Over the past 21 months of war in Gaza, more than 17,000 children have reportedly been killed and 33,000 injured. An average of 28 children have been killed each day — the equivalent of an entire classroom.
"Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children killed, every day for nearly two years," UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said during a UN Security Council briefing on July 16. "These children are not combatants. They are being killed and maimed as they line up for lifesaving food and medicine."
Read UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell's full statement on the humanitarian situation for children in Gaza at the UN Security Council meeting on July 16, 2025
Bilal, 17, was hit by shelling that shattered his knee as he waited in a crowd near a non-UN distribution point, hoping to bring back something for his family to eat. 'Before the war, I was always top of my class. I dreamed of a good life," he said. "Now I'm lying in the hospital. I didn't even get the food we needed.'
UNICEF is ready to ramp up delivery of emergency supplies for children
After almost 11 weeks of a complete aid blockade, authorities have allowed only a slow drip of UN supplies into the Gaza Strip since mid-May. Between May 19 and July 2, authorities permitted an average of 30 UN trucks per day to offload aid at designated crossings.
It's nowhere near enough. Before the war, 500 supply trucks entered Gaza daily.
'We know what works. We just need to be allowed to save lives.' UNICEF continues to call for safe and unrestricted humanitarian access throughout Gaza to deliver thousands of truckloads of essential, lifesaving supplies already prepositioned in warehouses — including nutrition products, water treatment supplies and vaccines. More entry points and multiple routes are needed to ensure safe delivery of aid.
"We have what works," UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder said in May. "We have what worked throughout the ceasefire. We saw things change. The United Nations and partners on the ground, having done this in Gaza, having done it in Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan — pick a war over 50 years, we know what works. We just need to be allowed to save lives."
Gazans in the vicinity of a distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — a private group supported by the U.S. and Israel — near Netzarim on July 7, 2025. Hundreds of civilians, including children, have been killed while waiting for aid at GHF sites. UNICEF continues to call for unrestricted access to deliver urgently needed humanitarian supplies across Gaza — more entry points and multiple routes are needed.
Babies and children can't wait
In northern Gaza, Waad and her husband, Masoud, watched helplessly as severe acute malnutrition claimed the lives of their newborn twins. Determined to keep their surviving children alive, Masoud walked 15 miles to reach a distribution point in Rafah, at the other end of Gaza, hoping to obtain food.
"We lost our twin babies after birth because of malnutrition. I can't lose Ibrahim and Mohammed too," he said.
'I thought anyone who got one can of beans was lucky.' "For over fifty days, nothing entered our tent," Masoud said. "We lived on soup kitchens, but they stopped working. I worked day and night to buy just one kilo of flour. That's why I went to Rafah when I heard about food distribution."
At the distribution point, "crowds were everywhere. I thought anyone who got one can of beans was lucky. If you survived the gunfire, you might still get attacked on the way out."
Waad holds her two surviving children, Mohammed, 3, and Ibrahim, 2, on her lap in northern Gaza. Her newborn twins died of malnutrition. Her husband, Masoud, was injured by shelling when he tried to get food for his family at a distribution site in Rafah.
Masoud waited in the growing crowd. "At 3 a.m., a shell hit near us," he said. "I threw myself to the ground. Everyone was injured. My leg was hit. I tied it with a cloth and crawled back. I hid there until the next day, hoping for another chance at the distribution point." By then, his leg was badly infected.
"I stayed because I hoped to get something by the next day," Masoud continued. "I had no money for transport. I thought if I got aid, I could sell some to pay for a cart. I didn't get anything. People helped me get home. I went to Al-Shifa Hospital. Doctors said my leg has early-stage gangrene. All this suffering, and my tent is still empty."
Watch the video: Tasneem's story
Children in Gaza need our support now
Of the more than 113,000 children screened for malnutrition in June, nearly 6,000 were found to be acutely malnourished — a staggering 180 percent increase in acute malnutrition cases compared to February.
"I feel weak and dizzy, my stomach hurts and my bones are beginning to show," said Tasneem, who is living in a tent in Al Yarmouk camp for the internally displaced.
The happy, healthy young girl seen in old photos bears little resemblance to Tasneem today. "My face used to be bright," she said. "At home we always had fruits and vegetables. Now, things are very hard."
UNICEF requires $463.8 million to meet urgent humanitarian needs in Gaza and the West Bank, but is only 35 percent funded, leaving a critical funding gap as conditions deteriorate.
Learn more: UNICEF in the State of Palestine Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report No. 40
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