Children's Rights

The Right to Life

Every child has the inherent right to life, survival, and development. This right requires more than protection from death: it requires that children are able to live safely, access essential services, remain with their families, and grow in dignity, health, and security.

Children's Right to Life Under International Law

The Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms that every child has the inherent right to life and requires States to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, children's survival and development. Children are also entitled to special protection under international humanitarian law, particularly during armed conflict and occupation. As an occupying power, Israel has legal obligations to protect Palestinian children, including by taking all feasible precautions to prevent civilian harm, ensuring access to food and medical supplies, maintaining medical and hospital services, facilitating humanitarian relief, and protecting children from violence, deprivation, and unlawful killing.

The Scale of Harm

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry reported that between 7 October 2023 and 7 October 2025, at least 20,179 Palestinian children were killed and 44,143 were injured in Gaza as a direct result of hostilities. Children constituted approximately 30 per cent of those killed during this period. The Commission further noted that the true number of child deaths is likely higher, including children believed to remain buried beneath rubble or missing without their deaths having been recorded. The harm is not limited to fatalities. Children have suffered severe blast injuries, burns, brain and spinal injuries, amputations, vision and hearing loss, and lasting psychological trauma. The destruction of hospitals, shortages of medical supplies, and barriers to evacuation have left many children without the specialised care, rehabilitation, assistive devices, and follow-up treatment they need.

Children Are Not Collateral Damage

The Commission found that the extensive use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas has caused exceptionally high child casualties. Children are particularly vulnerable to explosive weapons because of their physical development and because they are more likely to be inside homes, schools, shelters, and other civilian spaces when attacks occur. The Commission also documented cases in which Palestinian children were allegedly deliberately targeted by Israeli security forces while evacuating, sheltering in tents, seeking food, or living in displacement areas. Its findings included cases of children shot by snipers or armed quadcopters, as well as attacks on children and families attempting to reach safety or obtain medical assistance. These findings make clear that children must never be treated as incidental to military operations. Their lives, safety, and dignity must be protected at all times.

The Right to Life Includes Survival and Development

A child's right to life cannot be separated from access to food, clean water, healthcare, shelter, education, protection, and family care. When children are displaced repeatedly, deprived of medical treatment, exposed to unexploded ordnance, separated from caregivers, or forced to live amid destruction and fear, their right to survival and development is profoundly compromised. The Commission highlighted the continuing danger posed by unexploded ordnance across Gaza, including incidents in which children were seriously injured after mistaking explosive remnants for toys. It also documented the continuing killing and injury of children even during periods described as ceasefires or pauses in hostilities.

SIYAJ's Position

SIYAJ believes that every Palestinian child has the right to live free from violence, fear, injury, deprivation, and preventable death. The protection of children's lives must be an immediate priority for all duty bearers, humanitarian actors, and the international community. SIYAJ calls for: • Effective protection of Palestinian children from unlawful killing, injury, displacement, and all forms of violence. • An end to attacks and practices that place children at risk in homes, schools, shelters, hospitals, and other civilian spaces. • Safe, sustained, and unhindered access to food, water, healthcare, rehabilitation, psychosocial support, and humanitarian assistance. • Protection of hospitals, medical personnel, ambulances, schools, shelters, and other civilian infrastructure essential to children's survival. • The removal of unexploded ordnance and other remnants of war that continue to endanger children. • Independent, impartial, and effective investigations into grave violations against children, with accountability for those responsible. • Recognition of Palestinian children as rights holders whose lives, dignity, and future must be protected without discrimination. Protecting the right to life means protecting every child's ability to survive, recover, learn, belong, and hope. No child should have to fear that their home, school, shelter, or journey to safety may become the place where their life is lost.