Gaza is now one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child, top United Nations (UN) officials told the Security Council. With hundreds dying every week and the health system barely functioning, they said civilians are running out of food, medicine, and safe water, while deliveries of aid remain slow and heavily restricted.
“The situation defies language,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator. “Food is gone. People are being shot for trying to find it. Aid workers watch as bodies are carried in, day after day.” More than 5,800 children in Gaza were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in June alone.
Catherine Russell, who heads UNICEF, said children are the ones bearing the heaviest toll.
“Each day, an average of 28 children are killed. That’s a classroom wiped out daily,” she told ambassadors, adding that many die while waiting in line for food. “Children are not responsible for wars—but they’re always at the center of the suffering. And make no mistake, we have failed them.”
The crisis has deepened as hospitals shut, medicine runs out, and electricity drops to survival levels. Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, fewer than half are even partly open. Many mothers are giving birth without skilled care. Some babies now share a single incubator; more than two-thirds of essential medicines are unavailable. Clean water has all but disappeared—forcing families to drink what’s contaminated.
Fuel restrictions and slow border approvals have made aid delivery nearly impossible. Fletcher described roads reduced to rubble, cargo held up at many stages, and trucks stripped by desperate civilians. While Israel recently began allowing in a small amount of fuel for generators, petrol for ambulances remains blocked. Since mid-May, just over 60 percent of requested aid convoys have made it into Gaza—far short of need.
Both Fletcher and Russell called for urgent humanitarian access through all entry points, noting that without fast fuel deliveries and safer conditions for workers and families, “none of the planning matters.” They also called for the immediate release of all hostages held in Gaza and urged all sides to follow international humanitarian law, including the protection of aid workers and civilians.
“We don’t have to pick sides between stopping starvation and calling for the release of hostages,” Fletcher said. “We must do both.”
