The ongoing Gaza Crisis and impact to children

The crisis continues, more than a year on.

More than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza – the majority of them civilians, including women, children, older persons and at times entire families – have reportedly been killed, and more than 95,500 have been injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. It is estimated that a quarter of the injured in Gaza, or around 22,500 people, will require lifelong specialized rehabilitation and assistive care including individuals with severe limb injuries, amputations, spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injuries, and major burns.

On the ground UNICEF is delivering:
1. Health and nutrition support, ensuring children receive vital vaccines and are helping those suffering from severe acute malnutrition
2. Psycho-social support: Providing psycho-social support to displaced children and families to help them cope with the trauma
3. Water and sanitation: Delivering fuel to enable clean water supplies and distributing bottled water to benefit thousands of people

More than 2 million Palestinians are without protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, electricity and fuel – the basic necessities to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to the next, with no way out.

Women and girls’ dignity, safety, health and rights have been severely compromised.

The risk of famine persists with all 2.1 million residents still in urgent need of food and livelihood assistance as humanitarian access remains restricted.
Healthcare has been decimated. More than 500 attacks on health care have been recorded in Gaza.

Humanitarian and aid organizations have been doing their utmost to provide relief in Gaza and the West Bank, often at great personal risk, and with many aid workers paying the ultimate price. Our capacity to deliver is indisputable if we are granted the access we need.

UNICEF continue to call for safe and unrestricted humanitarian access to reach all affected populations in Gaza.

- $50 can contribute to psychosocial support for children traumatised by the conflict.
- $90 could provide 18,000 water purification tablets, each able to create up to 5 litres of clean drinking water.
- $160 could help provide 304 sachets of lifesaving therapeutic food.

Should the funding gap for this emergency be filled, your generous gift will go to where the need is greatest.