This is a summary of what was said by UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today’s press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva
GENEVA, 19 November 2024 – Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting pattern has emerged: their deaths are met with inertia from those able to stop this violence.
For the children of Lebanon, it has become a silent normalisation of horror.
In an effort to break that. Let’s look at just the past 10 days for children in Lebanon.
On Sunday 10 November: Seven children were killed from the same extended family. The family of 27 – all killed – was seeking shelter in Mount Lebanon after fleeing violence in the south.
On Monday, two more children were killed with their mother. Ten were injured.
On Tuesday: 13 children were killed. 13 more were injured, including 8 year old Ahmad who is now the only survivor of the strike.
On Wednesday: 4 children were killed, again having sought to flee fighting in the south.
On Thursday: 3 children were killed, 13 were injured.
Last Saturday (16 November): 5 children were killed, including 3 from the same family. Among the injured, Celine Haidar, a young football player in the National Lebanese team. She is in a coma due to a shrapnel in her head, from a missile that hit Beirut while she was trying to flee the area.
And on Sunday: two 4 year old twin girls were killed.
Indeed, over the past two months, more than three children have been killed in Lebanon, on average, every day. Many, many more have been injured and traumatized.
We must hope humanity never again witnesses the ongoing level of carnage of children in Gaza, though there are chilling similarities for children in Lebanon.
- The hundreds of thousands of children made homeless in Lebanon;
- The disproportionate attacks, of which many frequently hit infrastructure children rely on. Medical facilities are being attacked and health workers are being killed at an increasing speed. As of November 15, more than 200 health sector workers had been killed, and 300 injured, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
- Despite efforts in early November to open some schools for children in Lebanon, given widespread attacks over the weekend, all are again closed;
- The fourth chilling similarity to Gaza: the grave psychological impact on children. Alarming signs of emotional turmoil are becoming increasingly evident;
- And the most worrying parallel to Gaza: the escalation of children killed is eliciting no meaningful response from those with influence.
In response to the humanitarian crisis: UNICEF has provided tens of thousands of blankets, sleeping bags, mattresses, hygiene kits, meals, hundreds showers and toilets. We supported the reopening of public schools, mobile health teams reaching children. We are providing psychosocial support to children; we are supplying tons of medical supplies to a health system under attack; and our work on water has meant 450,0000 people once again have access to safe water. This, despite the fact that UNICEF’s latest appeal is less than 20 percent funded. And, as the attacks intensify, the level of need intensifies.
In Lebanon, much the same as has become the case in Gaza, the intolerable is quietly transforming into the acceptable. And the appalling is slipping into the realm of the expected.
And once more, the cries of children go unheard, the world’s silence grows deafening, and again we allow the unimaginable to become the landscape of childhood. A horrific and unacceptable new normal.
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