Make No Mistake, This Is A War Against Gaza's Children

Fatima is three years old and lives in a shelter run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Rafah, at the southern end of Gaza.

- JANE CRAWLEY

Her parents and two older brothers were killed when their apartment in Gaza City was bombed and destroyed by the Israeli forces.

Fatima was trapped under rubble for six hours, then rescued and rushed to hospital where her left arm was amputated. She was finally discharged into the care of neighbourhood friends, but intense bombardment forced her new family to move south, first to Khan Younis and then to Rafah.

The UNRWA shelter is densely overcrowded. People are tense, and there are intermittent outbreaks of violence. There is limited access to food and clean water – and a two-hour wait to use the toilet.

In the past fortnight, Fatima has had two episodes of diarrhoea and now has a chest infection. She constantly asks for her mother, has nightmares and sleeps poorly. She is hungry, thirsty, and very frightened. She is a WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family) – a chilling abbreviation used by aid workers in Gaza to describe the desperate plight of injured children who have lost their entire families.

The period between conception and three years of age is critical to a child’s health and development, as well as their subsequent health, emotional and social well-being and productivity as an adult. It is a time of rapid brain development when there is a massive increase in brain complexity and connectivity in response to the child’s interactions with their environment.

This early adaptive learning also modifies the way in which genes are expressed, so creating a blueprint for future health and behaviour during adult life, thereby impacting future generations.