At least 21,000 children in Gaza have been disabled since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, a United Nations committee said Wednesday.
Around 40,500 children have suffered “new war-related injuries” in the nearly two years since the war erupted, with more than half of them left disabled, said the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Reviewing the situation in the Palestinian territories, it said Israeli evacuation orders during the army’s offensive in Gaza were “often inaccessible” to people with hearing or visual impairments, “rendering evacuation impossible”.
At a news conference, committee member Muhannad Al-Azzeh cited the example of a deaf mother in Rafah killed alongside her children, unaware of instructions to evacuate.
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“Reports also described people with disabilities being forced to flee in unsafe and undignified conditions, such as crawling through sand or mud without mobility assistance,” the committee said.
Restrictions on humanitarian aid being brought into the Gaza Strip were disproportionately impacting the disabled, said the committee.
“People with disabilities faced severe disruptions in assistance, leaving many without food, clean water, or sanitation and dependent on others for survival,” it said.
– Gaza aid restrictions –
The decision to centralise aid distribution in Gaza has also made it far more difficult for the disabled to access desperately needed assistance, the committee warned.
While the new private US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has four distribution points across the territory, the UN system it has largely replaced had about 400.
“We can’t expect children with disabilities… to be able to run and go to the (aid) points,” said Azzeh.
“This is why one of our main recommendations is that children with disabilities must be reached out to,” as a high priority for humanitarian aid, he said.
Physical obstacles, such as war debris and the loss of mobility aids under the rubble, have also prevented people from reaching the relocated aid points.
The committee said 83 percent of disabled people had lost their assistive devices, with most unable to afford alternatives such as donkey carts.
It voiced concern that devices like wheelchairs, walkers, canes, splints and prosthetics were considered “dual-use items” by the Israeli authorities and were therefore not included in aid shipments.
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The committee called for the delivery of “massive humanitarian aid to persons with disabilities” affected by the war.
It said it had been informed of at least 157,114 people sustaining injuries, with over 25 percent at risk of life-long impairments, between October 7, 2023 and August 21 this year.
There were “at least 21,000 children with disabilities in Gaza as a result of impairments, acquired since October 7, 2023”, it said.
The committee urged Israel to adopt specific measures for protecting children with disabilities from attacks, and implement evacuation protocols that take into account persons with disabilities.
Israel should ensure disabled people are “allowed to return safely to their homes and are assisted in doing so”, it added.
