WITH the death toll in Gaza reaching 40,000 plus civilians, around 17,000 of them being children, it has without doubt become the largest graveyard for children witnessed by humanity in modern history. The international community ratified the UN Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1990, with the commitment to protect children everywhere, at all times by making the world a safer place for them, without any discrimination based on geography, ethnicity or religion.
The irony is, the architects of this crucial international legal document have been its biggest violators. The United States played a crucial role in drafting this convention but is neither a signatory to it nor has ratified it- clearly demonstrating its status as a hegemonic power that stands above international law as events in the post-cold war era have highlighted. The role of the US and its coalition forces in the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq, and subsequent proxy wars in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia has exhibited little regard for the protection of children.
Historically, the US has been the primary supporter of Israeli statehood and was the first country to recognize it. On the outside, the US may act as a neutral arbiter, but it has been the force behind Israel’s settler colonialism. By regularly vetoing to protect Israel from UNSC resolutions, the US has claimed that the UN is biased against the Jewish state. The US is also Israel’s largest trading partner, and its aid contributes to 16% of Israel’s military expenditure. It also signed its first free trade agreement with Israel in 1985.
Only days ago, amidst Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza’s civilian population residing in shelters and “safe spaces,” the US approved another $20 billion in arms sales to Israel. Drawing a comparison with major global or regional conflicts in the post-cold war era, Israel’s siege of Gaza has been the deadliest in terms of child deaths, with children and infants accounting for more than 40 % of the total civilians killed. I use the term “killed” to emphasize that these children have been murdered and are not mere casualties or collateral damage.
In the Bosnian war, or more explicitly, the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995, around 11,541 civilians were killed, 1,601 of them being children. According to UN statistics, the Russia-Ukraine war has led to 11,520 civilian deaths over the course of two years, 1,957 of them being children. While children always become victims in wars, targeting children deliberately is the most egregious violation of international humanitarian law.
An even more disturbing aspect is obstructing humanitarian aid to the survivors by blocking the flow of aid either by blocking critical border crossings, through military offensives in those crossings like Rafah or by targeting aid workers, creating famine-like conditions for men, women, children and babies. The sheer brutality committed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against Palestinian children is beyond compare.
Hind Rajab was one of those 17,000 ill-fated children who became a victim of the IDFs brutality in what was termed as a “planned execution” by a Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor investigation. Hind, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl was shot at 335 times by an Israeli tank while she was hopelessly waiting in her car for paramedics to rescue her after all her family members were killed.
On August 14, only three days after their birth, Palestinian twins Aysel and Asar, along with their mother and grandmother were killed by an Israeli air strike while their father, Mohammed Abu Al-Qumsan had gone to collect their birth certificates. These are just a few of those children, some old enough to dream about a bright future, others too young to comprehend a future, and some not even old enough to learn to how to smile.
Let’s imagine for a while that these children are not Palestinians. Let’s imagine they are from a more privileged part of the world, not treated as a periphery by the developed West. Let’s now imagine how the international community would react to their killing, and how the killer would be treated. Let’s imagine Israel or a European country was at the receiving end of the genocide.
The answers are clear and need no explanation, but as a staunch advocate of children’s rights, I refuse to refer to these 16,456 murdered children as mere numbers or casualties. They are babies and children who were born to live, unfortunately, in a place that became their graveyard before they could call it home.
—The writer works as a Senior Programme Officer on Gender Inclusion at the Aga Khan Foundation, Pakistan and is a human rights activist.
