For the first time, Israel and Hamas will be named as perpetrators of child rights crimes in the annual Children in Armed Conflict report published by the United Nations.
According to the study, which was supposed to be released on Thursday, there has been a 155% increase in “grave violations” against minors in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The Israel Defense Forces has been specifically named for killing and maiming children as well as for attacking schools and hospitals. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have also been named for kidnapping, killing, and injured children.
According to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the conflict has resulted in a “appalling, dramatic increase and unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children” throughout the region, with Gazan children suffering the worst.
However, he stated that he was gravely upset by “brutal acts of terror” against children committed by the Palestinian armed organization in the Oct. 7 attacks, in which 38 children were slain and 42 taken captive, and that investigating claims of sexual violence was vital.
The U.N. said it had, however, corroborated more than 8,000 serious violations against 4,247 Palestinian children and 113 Israeli children in 2023, noting that it was working through a 2,000-case backlog of reports of killed and injured children.
Unidentified perpetrators were responsible for another 58 infractions, Israeli settlements for 51, Islamic Jihad for 21, and lone Palestinians for 13, while Palestinian Authority Security Forces were accused of committing one incident.
Israeli officials responded strongly to Israel’s placement to the blacklist, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that the UN had “put itself on the blacklist of history” by siding with Hamas murderers.
Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan took to social media, calling lumping the IDF in with countries and organizations that hurt children “simply outrageous and wrong” because Hamas has been
According to the United Nations study, Israel-Hamas crimes were part of a larger trend of child killing and injury across all conflicts throughout the world, including in Ukraine and Sudan, with a “shocking” 21% increase in “grave violations” of their rights.
