Skip to content Skip to footer

UN: Israel Committed at Least 5,700 “Grave Violations” Against Children in 2023

Israel was the single largest contributor of grave violations against children across the globe last year.

A displaced Palestinian boy is splashing his face with water in front of his tent during a heatwave in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on June 11, 2024.

The UN has added Israeli forces to a list of global violators of children’s rights, citing Israel’s “unprecedented” scale of violence against Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank.

In the UN secretary-general’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report, released Thursday, the UN office finds that 2023 saw the highest level of violations against children ever recorded in a single year, due in part to rising violence in Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, among others.

The largest single contributor to the nearly 33,000 grave violations against children identified by the UN last year was Israel, with at least 5,700 verified violations attributed to Israeli forces, as well as nearly 7,900 violations against Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza overall, 2,051 of which are still unattributed.

This includes the killings of 2,267 Palestinian children that the UN was able to verify, and an additional 2,051 killings just between October and December in Gaza, with “most” caused by Israeli forces, the report said.

In total, just last year, the UN identified 19,887 reports of Palestinian children being killed or maimed, with some reports still yet to be verified. Notably, the UN has acknowledged that this is likely not a full accounting due to “severe access challenges” in Gaza.

The UN also verified several dozen grave violations against children by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, and 136 violations against Israeli children, largely during the October 7 attack.

“The conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory presents an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children,” the report says.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres lists Israel as a violator of children’s rights as part of the report.

“In Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Israeli armed and security forces have been listed for the killing and maiming of children, and for attacks on schools and hospitals,” the report says. “[T]he last quarter of 2023 exposed an extreme rise in violations, particularly against children in the Gaza Strip, in particular the use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects, including in highly populated areas, which resulted in a large number of child casualties.”

While denial of humanitarian access is not a violation able to be listed on the register of children’s rights violators, the report urges Israel to abide by international law and to stop blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

“Children are at risk of famine, severe malnutrition and preventable death,” the report says.

The report follows another set of analyses released by the UN on Wednesday finding that the scale of Israel’s collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza between October and December of 2023 amounted to crimes against humanity — considered among the gravest violations of international law. This includes the crime of extermination, or the intentional massacre of a group of people.

Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has been particularly brutal on children. According to official death counts, Israel has killed over 15,000 children since October — an average of 60 children a day. The true number is likely higher, as government-reported death counts don’t include the thousands of people presumed dead under the rubble, or those dying due to reasons like starvation or dehydration.

Meanwhile, Palestinian children who have survived thus far are facing horror after horror. Roughly 3,000 children have lost limbs since October, doctors in Gaza have reported, while Israel’s assault has orphaned at least 19,000 children.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.