Human Rights and Democracy Media Center “SHAMS” demands the urgent need to protect Palestinian children from the continuous Israeli attacks, which are taking place on a daily basis. Also, it highlights the necessity to keep them away from the conflict based on the Fourth Geneva Convention that protects civilians, and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects the rights of children, their lives, their natural growth and development in a healthy environment for living, appropriate health care, and providing them with psychological security far from all forms of violence, suffering, and persecution.
Furthermore, “SHAMS” Center calls all international human rights institutions concerned with children’s rights to assume their legal and moral responsibilities and protect Palestinian children whose rights are violated on a daily basis by the occupation, with the need to hold criminals accountable, not to leave them with impunity. Hence, there is a need to implement all the provisions of the United Nations Convention on Human Rights Palestinian children to enjoy all its provisions and the rights and obligations contained therein. Thus, it urges the International Criminal Court based on the Rome Statute, which was signed in 1998 and entered into force in 2002, to criminalize Israeli war criminals who target Palestinian civilians, especially children.
“SHAMS” Center emphasizes that the crimes committed by the occupying state against Palestinian children are crimes described in international law as they are gross violations of international humanitarian law. Their crimes included causing injury, depriving them from freedom of movement, demolishing homes, depriving them of housing, losing security and personal security for children, and depriving them of education by targeting schools, kindergartens, child care centers, and entertainment centers, especially playgrounds.
“SHAMS” Center documented (262) martyrs in 2022 including (55) children, and since the beginning of this year the number of martyrs reached (95) martyrs, including (17) children. In 2023 until the 5th of April, 2023, the number of Palestinian prisoners in the occupation prisons reached (4800) males and female prisoners of them (170) children, which means that the violations of the occupying power are still continuing and at a high rate, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilians in time of war, as children are among the civilians who must be protected. In addition, they do not participate in hostilities and must be protected and neutralize them from the conflict.
“SHAMS” center confirms that children are the most affected and targeted groups of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation, as the weakest and easiest group to be targeted by the occupation forces and settlers while they go to their schools or return from their schools to their homes. Also, the continuous crimes of the occupation against the Palestinians led to the loss of one of the parents or both, which means more negative social, economic and psychological effects on children, which makes them lose the sense of tenderness and fatherhood, in addition to the state of poverty, destitution and deprivation.
“SHAMS” Center demands the Secretary-General of the United Nations, UNICEF and the representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Children, Conflict and Armed Forces to send international investigation and fact-finding missions to the occupied Palestinian territories to witness the daily suffering of Palestinian children by the Israeli occupation and its settlers and to examine the grave violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the occupied Palestinian territory.
“SHAMS Center calls the Palestinian government to take more public measures and policies to protect children and provide them with all possible means, in compliance with the Palestinian Child Law No. (7) issued in 2004 and Palestine’s accession to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The severity of poverty that Palestinian families suffer from is reflected negatively on the economic and social reality of Palestinian children in the inability of their families to provide them with basic needs, especially in education and health issues due to the difficult economic situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Based on the foregoing, “SHAMS” Center recommends the Palestinian Child’s Day and emphasizes the following:
- Demanding the international community to assume its responsibilities in order to protect the children of Palestine from the continuous attacks and crimes by the Israeli occupation army and its settlers.
- The need to adopt a Palestinian national strategy to confront the daily violations of the occupation against the children of Palestine.
- The need to submit complaints against the perpetrators of Israeli crimes to international criminal courts and to the national judiciary of democratic countries whose judicial systems allow this.
- The need to build a national media strategy to expose the crimes of the occupation against the children of Palestine before the Western international public opinion.
- The need to neutralize the Palestinian educational process from any political, organizational, or factional tensions that lead to the disruption of the educational process, whatever its causes.
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