ICSPR issues a fact sheet titled“A Stolen Childhood in the Gaza Strip Between Forced Child Labor and Deprivation of Education During the War of Genocide”
Date: 17 June 2026
Press Release
ICSPR issues a fact sheet titled: “A Stolen Childhood in the Gaza Strip: Between Forced Child Labor and Deprivation of Education During the War of Genocide”
The International Commission to Support Palestinian People’s Rights (ICSPR) has issued a fact sheet prepared by researcher and lawyer Yasmeen Walid Qasem titled: “A Stolen Childhood in the Gaza Strip: Between Forced Child Labor and Deprivation of Education During the War of Genocide,” examining the reality of childhood in the Gaza Strip during the war and the dangerous expansion of child labor and worsening deprivation of education, in a manner that threatens the future of an entire generation of children.
The paper explains that the right to education, as one of the child’s fundamental rights, has been widely violated and undermined in the Gaza Strip as a result of the ongoing war of genocide, where children have found themselves facing catastrophic conditions that stripped them of the basic necessities of life and turned schools from spaces of learning and growth into places associated in their memory with scenes of killing, loss, displacement, and suffering.
The fact sheet indicates that the war of genocide has entered its third year after causing the killing of no fewer than 72,991 people and the injury of more than 173,219 others with severe injuries, including more than 43,000 people suffering life-changing injuries, while the population of the Gaza Strip has declined by around 10.6% compared with the period before 7 October 2023, amid systematic destruction affecting around 90% of the Strip’s infrastructure and an expanding circle of poverty, unemployment, and loss of family breadwinners and income sources.
The paper notes that children have borne the largest share of the war’s consequences, with more than 21,510 children killed and around 41,283 injured, while at least 15 children are reported to suffer permanent disabilities every day, and one in every five amputees in the Gaza Strip is a child. It also documents more than 55,157 children orphaned by the war, 64,616 orphaned children in total, around 18,000 unaccompanied or separated children, and more than 826 sole surviving children whose entire families were killed.
The paper highlights that the economic and social collapse has pushed increasing numbers of families to send their children into the labor market to secure the bare minimum needed for survival, amid unemployment nearing 80%, poverty exceeding 93%, 95% of the population relying on humanitarian aid, and more than 250,000 workers losing their jobs and sources of income. In this context, the paper states that child labor in the Gaza Strip has increased by more than 80% as a result of the war, and that around 24% of households are now being managed by children under the age of 16.
The fact sheet reviews multiple dangerous forms of forced child labor that have emerged in the Gaza Strip, including collecting firewood and nylon bags from rubble, gathering debris, scrap, and metals, collecting sacks and cartons, selling flour and aid supplies, working as porters and goods carriers, transporting people using animal-drawn carts, begging and theft, filling and selling water, heating and selling water, standing for long hours in charity kitchen lines, selling sweets and homemade baked goods, selling food items and aid through street stalls, working in fishing, device-charging points, cemeteries and grave digging, and makeshift fuel production workshops.
The paper stresses that these activities do not merely reflect economic participation by children, but rather a forced shift from the sphere of protection and care into early responsibility and economic exploitation in an environment lacking even minimum safety standards and exposing children to the risks of injury, death, disease, direct targeting, and physical and psychological exploitation.
With regard to education, the paper explains that around 720,000 school and university students have been deprived of continuing their education, including around 620,000 school-age children, while only about 80,000 students have managed to enroll in online education. It also documents damage to around 95% of schools in the Gaza Strip, the targeting and destruction of all approximately 820 schools to varying degrees, as well as damage to 95% of university campuses and widespread destruction affecting educational buildings and facilities.
The paper discusses the harmful consequences of child labor, including deprivation of basic rights, denial of education, exposure to serious health risks, worsening malnutrition and disease, deep psychological and social harm, economic exploitation, and involvement in dangerous or deviant behaviors as a result of the absence of protection and the spread of disorder. In this regard, it notes that around 96% of children feel that death has become imminent, 87% show signs of severe fear, 79% suffer from sleep disorders and nightmares, and nearly one million children are experiencing acute psychological effects.
On the legal side, the fact sheet reviews the international framework for protecting children from child labor and economic exploitation, drawing on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the two International Covenants on Human Rights, International Labour Organization conventions, and other legal references that criminalize child labor in hazardous work or in work that obstructs the child’s right to education and healthy development. It stresses that child labor in contexts of armed conflict constitutes a grave human rights violation requiring protection and effective international intervention.
The paper concludes with a number of recommendations, most notably calling for a comprehensive national plan to protect children in the Gaza Strip, reduce child labor, and reintegrate children into education as soon as conditions allow, while strengthening mechanisms to monitor and document grave violations against children and providing social protection programs and economic support for the poorest families and those that have lost their breadwinners. It also calls for integrating psychosocial support services for affected children, providing safe and sustainable educational alternatives, urging the international community and the United Nations to act urgently to stop the war of genocide, hold the Israeli occupation accountable for grave violations against Palestinian children, expand protection, education, and psychosocial support programs, establish an international protection mechanism or network for Palestinian children, and work toward rebuilding schools and educational institutions.
ICSPR affirms that this fact sheet comes within the framework of its efforts to shed light on the grave violations affecting children in the Gaza Strip, defend their rights to education, protection, and a dignified life, and warn of the catastrophic dangers threatening their present and future amid the continuation of the war and humanitarian collapse.
