Children do not start wars or plan acts of terrorism, but too often they are their greatest victims, as the conflict engulfing Israel and Gaza so painfully demonstrates.
This is a struggle fought out on a battlefield with no distinction between civilian and military theatres, and which is now taking place mostly in Gaza, where Hamas is embedded in towns and villages and where a million young people under 18 form nearly half the population. There are few wars in history in which children have constituted such a high proportion of the people most at risk.
The sight of defenceless children in distress should evoke global outrage and galvanise us to act. And that is why Hamas terrorists, who in their rampage maimed, killed and kidnapped innocent children, should now be subject to arrest and prosecution by the international criminal court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They should stand in the same dock as their terrorist counterparts in Islamic State, Boko Haram and the multiple organisations operating in the Sahel.
But in confronting Hamas’s crimes and upholding Israel’s right to defend itself, we must set a standard grounded in the rule of law and in the rules of war. Although Israel’s government has not put a figure on it, there were a significant number of children and young people among the 1,400 Israelis who were murdered and the many more who were maimed. Already in Gaza, 2,360 children have died and 5,364 are injured. If the international community and the armed combatants can agree on nothing else, we surely must agree that children should be protected to the greatest extent possible by humanitarian and human rights laws.
So it is a sad commentary on the polarised times we live in that this week, the UN security council could not even bring forward an agreed resolution that provides explicit safeguards for the rights of children currently caught up in the conflict, reinforcing a perception that the international community is as powerless to protect children in Israel and Gaza as it has been in a succession of tragedies in Yemen, Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine.
International humanitarian law and human rights laws lay down clear guidelines. But there is a growing admission that the way they are currently enforced is inadequate, with gaps in protection and no single instrument or body with the jurisdiction to adjudicate the gross violation of children’s rights, as proposed in the report Protecting Children in Armed Conflict that I worked to promote with its author, Shaheed Fatima KC. Indeed, not much has changed since 1996, when Graça Machel’s report to the UN general assembly on children in conflict spoke of “a space devoid of the most basic human values … a space in which children are slaughtered”. She concluded, “There are few further depths to which humanity can sink.”
But the protections that do exist are designed to prevent children being used as human shields and to avoid them becoming the innocent victims of bombing and raids.
Exactly 100 years ago, the declaration on children’s rights drafted by Eglantyne Jebb and published by the International Save the Children Union demanded that “the child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress”. “The child that is hungry must be fed,” it stated, “the child that is sick must be nurtured, and the orphan sheltered and succoured.” A century on, with wars being fought not on depopulated terrain but in towns and villages, the need for protections for non-combatants is even more urgent.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, the Red Cross was instrumental in drafting a convention for the protection of children during armed conflict situations, which called for “places for safety … secured locations [that] would be respected and protected in any circumstances”. Since then, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights have foreshadowed a string of international conventions, leading in 1989 to the convention on the rights of the child and its subsequent protocols.
Its article 38 requires “all feasible measures to ensure the protection and care of children affected by armed conflict”, and its specific requirements include the maintenance of basic health systems and services and water supplies and the designation of schools as protected areas. It also demands “corridors of peace” and “days of tranquillity”. And with only an estimated 2% of the usual food supplies getting through to children in Gaza and limited water supplies available, a charter protecting the rights of children should urgently ensure that talk of “humanitarian pauses” or “lulls” or “windows” really means unimpeded humanitarian access to address the current emergencies.
This should be common ground: in every religion there is an injunction against putting innocent children in jeopardy. So, first, all children – Palestinian and Israeli – must know that they are not alone, that we will monitor what is happening to them and other civilians during this crisis, with a promise that every murder and kidnapping will be prosecuted as a war crime by the international criminal court, as is the case for Vladimir Putin, who has been charged by the court over the forced transfer of children from Ukraine. All hostages should be released immediately, and their relatives given proof of life and assured of Red Cross access.
It is not enough to feel children’s pain. The urgent need for food, shelter, electricity and healthcare – and, in time, education – must not only be met but fully financed. The UN’s humanitarian relief funds will have to be trebled from the $17.9bn currently pledged to the $55.5bn deemed essential to meet current emergencies; and, if necessary, we should set up a special children’s emergency fund inviting governments, companies and the general public around the world to donate. Alf Dubs, a Jewish refugee who came to Britain as a child through the Kindertransport, is right: alongside other countries, we will have to be prepared, as with Ukraine, to take in child refugees.
Too many of us have remained silent as 468 million children – one child in every six, almost twice as many as 30 years ago – are condemned to live and die in conflict zones. In 2021, 22 children a day were killed and maimed as victims of war; even before the dramatic rise in child deaths in Ukraine and now the Middle East.
With the eyes of the world on it, the current conflict will become a test case of whether, in a war fought in heavily populated urban areas, children can ever be protected. If, with sufficient advance warning, we cannot create safe spaces, ensure children are shielded and prepare and provide humanitarian aid, we will have little chance of ever saving children at risk in the less publicised wars in other parts of the world.
Today, children are silent victims, and if we cannot demonstrate we have done everything in our power to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, the scars will remain decades after this conflict is over, casting a long and gruesome shadow across the entire century.
Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
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