As of April 2025, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that 17,954 children have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, with more than 39,000 orphaned and more than 7,000 injured, many with permanent disabilities. Thousands now face severe hunger, with projections indicating 60,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children aged under five in 2025. A mid-2025 mortality survey by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) validated almost 90 per cent of Gaza’s Ministry of Health data and found that nearly half of those killed by blast injuries in MSF households were children. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that acute malnutrition in children aged under five years has reached catastrophic levels.

These are not abstract figures, they lay bare the systematic destruction of what sustains dignified childhood. Yet, too many professions charged with protecting children, education, psychology or safeguarding, have remained eerily disengaged and silent.

‘Too many professions charged with protecting children, education, psychology, safeguarding, have remained eerily disengaged and silent.’

As a social and developmental psychologist, speaking out about children in Palestine is not merely an academic position, it is my ethical imperative. This focus does not diminish the suffering of others in Gaza but reflects the gravity of the impact on children whose lives, development and futures are being erased. In recent months, seeing images of children reduced to skin and bone, shared across social media, has been unbearable. They are not abstractions; they are children whose hunger is visible in every frame. It has made the act of eating, of carrying on with ordinary routines, feel weighted with guilt, a daily reminder of the disparity between my safety and their starvation.

The erasure of childhood

What is happening in Gaza is not collateral, it’s systematic. Schools, homes, hospitals – spaces that should foster learning, safety and healing – have been turned into rubble or zones of trauma. Many children have died alongside their families; many more now face debilitating injuries, constant displacement or total abandonment. In hospitals, staff use the term WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) for children admitted alone and unidentified, a phrase that should stop us in our tracks (Boukari et al., 2024).

The protective systems that once existed have collapsed. All paediatric hospitals are gone, medical access is blocked, and treatable illnesses and malnutrition are claiming children’s lives. This isn’t fallout, it’s the dismantling of childhood itself.

The silence from professional bodies is especially stark. While the American Psychological Association has called for a ceasefire, others have offered statements so delayed, so narrow or so muted that they barely register against the scale of the crisis.

For educators, this is not a distant issue. Safeguarding doesn’t halt at the school gate. To turn away is to erode public trust and to normalise a ranking of lives, creating a professional culture that justifies selective silence.

Reclaiming our ethical responsibilities

Ethical clarity is not optional. What children in Gaza are enduring is a direct violation of their rights to life, safety, health and education. In June 2025, a report by Defence for Children International, Palestine and Doctors Against Genocide, Starving a Generation, verified cases of child starvation, showing that deprivation is not an unintended consequence of war but an outcome that has been deliberately engineered. Silence in the face of this does not shield our neutrality, it erodes our duty to protect children everywhere.

There are concrete ways to respond. Professional bodies and institutions can issue public statements that address these harms with moral precision. Educators can create spaces for honest, values-led discussion in classrooms, staffrooms and professional networks. The short documentary Through a Child’s Eyes, produced with an accompanying discussion guide, is a ready-to-use tool for teacher training and educational dialogue. The Teach Palestine Project offers adaptable lesson plans and webinars that centre Palestinian history and identity. Visualizing Palestine provides data-driven visual resources that make the scale and nature of the harm comprehensible for diverse audiences. For those starting out, Palestine 101 from Educators for Palestinian Liberation, offers an accessible introduction to the history, context and rights frameworks essential for informed engagement.

Conclusion

We do not serve children by staying silent. Every safeguarding policy, every rights-based curriculum, every pastoral duty we hold is meaningless if it can be set aside for some children but not others. This is not a question of political preference, but a measure of whether our professional values hold under pressure; and when this period is remembered, alongside the indisputable destruction in Gaza, it will be clear how we, as educators and child advocates, chose to respond, or not respond.

If we remain quiet, we will live with the knowledge that our words about justice and care rang hollow when they were most needed. That knowledge will sit with us, in our classrooms and professional communities, long after the immediate violence has faded from the headlines. The children of Gaza will remember what was done to them; our students will remember what we did, or did not, choose to face. And the very causes we claim to stand for will be weakened, not strengthened, by the hypocrisy and self-interest that that silence reveals.

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References

Boukari, Y., Kadir, A., Waterston, T., Jarrett, P., Harkensee, C., Dexter, E., … Devakumar, D. (2024). Gaza, armed conflict and child health. BMJ Paediatrics Open, 8(1), e002407. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjpo-2023-002407

Pervez, A. (2025). Witnessing silence: The Palestinian genocide, institutional complicity, and the politics of knowledge. Globalisation, Societies and Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2025.2513637