ON WORLD Day Against Child Labour, 12 June: Gaza’s crushed childhood turns into a struggle for survival, Hamas said yesterday.
In Gaza, footballs, pencils, and festive clothes no longer symbolise childhood.
Instead, pebbles, carts, and manual grinding machines have become tools of daily survival, gripped by frail children with hollow faces and cracked hands, spending their early years in forced labour in search of a scrap of bread.
These children don’t ‘live’ their childhood — they ‘survive’ it, in an era where childhood has turned into a project of endurance.
On a sidewalk in a popular market in Khan Younis, near an overcrowded displacement shelter, boys no older than ten operate a primitive metal machine for grinding chickpeas.
Their faces are sunken from hunger, their bodies thin, and their voices weak under the weight of exhaustion. Here, childhood is not an age — it’s a heavy burden forced upon their shoulders.
Since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, children have been, and remain, the first in line among the victims. According to UNICEF, more than 18,000 children have been killed in Gaza, and tens of thousands have been injured, some with permanent disabilities and amputations.
A report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that four out of five children in Gaza suffer from severe psychological disorders due to the war, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic anxiety, and a deep loss of familial security.
‘We work so we don’t starve’
Little Abdul Rahman Abu Jamaa, from Khan Younis, says in a voice heavy with bitterness: ‘Before the war, we used to play and laugh and wait for Eid with joy. Today, we work so we don’t die of hunger.’
This child, now the sole provider for his family, explains how preparing falafel in the market in exchange for a few coins has become the family’s only source of income — ever since aid distribution points turned into death traps.
When school is replaced by a street stall
In the same market, eight-year-old Habiba weaves through passersby carrying a small stall selling what she calls ‘cheap biscuits’. Her eyes speak of betrayal as she says: ‘I sell so we can buy flour. The war took everything.’
Her silent plea seems to ask: How did flour become a dream? How did playing become a luxury?
A similar scene is repeated with the girls Nour and Tala. One pushes water bottles in a wheelchair toward Nasser Hospital, and the other sells food scraps on a table set up by her family beside the rubble of their demolished home.
No schools. No games. No safety
All of them share loss, fear, and need — unaware of what the ‘World Day Against Child Labour,’ celebrated every June 12, even means.
According to UNICEF, all children in Gaza have been denied education, as schools have been either completely or partially destroyed or converted into shelters for the displaced. Nearly one million children now live in extreme poverty, deprived of basic necessities such as clean water, healthcare, and proper nutrition.
Yamen Al-Qarra, a boy crouching on the ground, displays second-hand clothes on a tattered piece of cloth. He says quietly, with the maturity of someone far beyond his years: ‘I sell so we can buy flour… I miss my school, my backpack, my brother’s laugh.’
And finally, young Menna Al-Shanbari closes the marketplace scene with a heartbreaking call: ‘Bread for sale!’ She wanders among the crowd, scanning faces not for customers — but for salvation.
Death at the doorstep
of aid
In the besieged Strip, from its far north to its south, venturing out in search of a sack of flour or a can of food is now a gamble with death. Since May 27, Israeli forces have killed at least 224 people and injured over 1,800 more through gunfire and artillery shelling aimed at starving citizens at the so-called ‘US-Israeli aid distribution points.’
Aid has shifted from being a symbol of hope to a looming danger. Bread has become more precious than gold, with the price of acquiring it paid in blood — often for a 25-kg flour sack or a single box of supplies.
This grim reality prompted UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to describe the US aid distribution mechanism as ‘Hunger Games’, referencing the famous American film.
The UN estimates Gaza needs around 500 aid trucks daily to meet basic needs — goods that have been missing from markets for nearly two years.
International human rights organisations estimate that about 88% of homes in Gaza have been either completely or partially destroyed, meaning nearly every child has lost a home, a classroom, or a family member.
So, on the World Day Against Child Labour, when slogans should be raised and calls made to protect innocence — in Gaza, that slogan is buried under rubble.
The children do not know holidays. They do not celebrate. They are slaughtered — sometimes by missiles, other times by hunger, and always by the silence of the world.
- Last Sunday, at least 75,000 people marched in Brussels and another 150,000 in The Hague in some of the largest rallies held in Europe to draw attention to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators in The Hague donned red clothing and marched to protest the Dutch government’s policy toward Israel on Sunday.
It was the second time the so-called ‘Red Line protest’ took place in the Dutch political capital, exceeding the turnout for a similar event in May.
Protesters walked a 5-kilometre loop around the centre of The Hague to symbolically create the red line they say the government has failed to draw to halt Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
The human rights groups and aid agencies — including Amnesty International, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders — that organised the march estimated the peaceful crowd at more than 150,000 people.
‘I don’t want to be complicit in these horrendous crimes happening there and I want to speak out,’ said protester Marin Koning.
In neighbouring Belgium, organisers estimated 110,000, many of them also clad in red, hit the streets in the capital Brussels.
Several rallies have been held to draw attention to Israel’s actions in Gaza, but Sunday’s was the biggest rally so far.
The Dutch protest sent a ‘clear signal’, according to Marjon Rozema of Amnesty International Netherlands. Dutch officials must ‘act now, at both the national and international level, to increase the pressure on the Israeli government’, she said in a statement.
Outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof responded to the protest in a post on X. ‘We see you and we hear you,’ he wrote, adding that ‘our eventual goal is the same: to bring an end as soon as possible to the suffering in Gaza.’
As during the first Red Line protest in May, the march took the crowds past the Peace Palace, headquarters of the United Nations’ International Court of Justice, where last year judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.
Experts at the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report last week that Israel committed the crime against humanity of ‘extermination’ by killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites.
Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a report published in December.
The Israeli offensive since October 7, 2023, has to date killed more than 55,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
