Nowhere is safe in Gaza. But for many children with disabilities and their families, even fleeing from attacks is extremely difficult or not an option. Many also face serious barriers to accessing services essential to their health and survival, including food, water, assistive devices, and much-needed treatment and health care. Senior Web Producer Paul Aufiero spoke with Emina Ćerimović, Associate Director of Human Rights Watch’s Disability Rights Division, about her new report focusing on the toll of the Israeli military’s offensive on Palestinian children with disabilities and their families in Gaza, and why it’s so important they be protected.
What are children with disabilities in Gaza facing?
Our new report, “They Destroyed What Was Inside Us: Children with Disabilities Amid Israel’s Attacks on Gaza,” finds that Israel’s use of explosive weapons throughout Gaza is causing mass casualties among children, including serious injuries and permanent disabilities. Save the Children estimated in January that every day more than 10 children in Gaza lose at least one limb. Tens of thousands of other children have become orphans or been separated from their caregivers.
Many children with disabilities also do not have access or have lost access to assistive devices, such as wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs, impacting their mobility, development, and even ability to flee from attacks.
Israeli forces’ attacks on hospitals have taken a horrific toll on Gaza’s healthcare system. There are now just 17 semi-functioning hospitals in the entire Gaza Strip. Parents, as well as doctors, that I interviewed said children who have been injured and acquired a disability had not been able to access adequate treatment and children who had disability prior to the Israel’s offensive had stopped receiving ongoing care or essential medicines, as well as physical therapy because the destruction to healthcare infrastructure has been so extreme. Since December I have been in contact with Wesam, whose 5-year-old nephew has cerebral palsy, and who told me that it’s impossible to find the anti-convulsant and anti-epileptic medication his nephew needs. The boy also lost his father, who was a nurse and knew best how to attend to his son’s needs, in an attack earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, attacks on civilian infrastructure have also contributed to a lack of sanitation and access to clean water in Gaza, which has caused some children with disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, to be more at risk of disease. The Israeli government’s use of starvation as a method of war and its sweeping blockade and restrictions on humanitarian aid, which amount to collective punishment, have caused unnecessary suffering in Gaza. Some of the children who have died from starvation or are malnourished are children with disabilities or chronic health conditions. Children with disabilities are in general at higher risk of malnourishment. Osman, a 16-year-old boy with a disability who uses a gastrostomy tube, had lost 7 kilograms before his family could escape Gaza in mid-November due to the lack of access to specific food he needed.
Israeli authorities’ disregard for the rights and specific needs of people with disabilities predates the post-October 7 hostilities. In 2020, we reported that the Israeli government’s closure of the Gaza Strip and intermittent hostilities had undermined children and adults with disabilities’ access to health care and education, as well as assistive devices. People we spoke with couldn’t access electricity to power their assistive devices, such as electric wheelchairs.
But people I interviewed for this report, many of whom have lived through rounds of hostilities over the years, told me the current situation is not comparable to anything they previously experienced. All of them have been displaced multiple times in just the last few months and none have had regular access to the most basic social services. Some have lost family members. Nour, a 14-year-old girl with Down Syndrome, lost both of her parents, a sister, and a brother in an attack striking their home. And for all the children and their families, no place is safe.
Thousands of children have acquired a disability since the offensive began in October. What have you documented?
Israel’s use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas, which are very likely to indiscriminately kill and injure civilians, has led to serious injuries among children, causing permanent disability and lifelong scarring. I interviewed several parents of children who would graphically describe traumatic amputations of limbs they would witness in their children. Malek, 13, who had escaped with his family from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, believing he would be safe there, had his entire left arm blown off in an attack on a market where he went with his mom to get food coupons. Over and again, doctors would tell me they had never seen such severe injuries, attributing it to the weapons used. They described the anguish they felt over the inability to properly treat the injuries due to lack of capacity and relentless attacks on healthcare infrastructure. A 14-year-old girl had her leg amputated upon evacuation to Egypt because the wound became gangrenous by the time she got there.
How are people with disabilities, and particularly children, managing to find safety from attacks?
People with disabilities are at higher risk of death and injury during armed conflicts because it is harder for them to flee or follow evacuation orders to leave an area or warnings of an imminent attack that often do not consider accessibility and the needs of people with disabilities.
The scale of destruction in Gaza has made the situation even more dire, as people with disabilities often require help navigating the rubble to flee and cannot find accessible transportation or shelters.
These dangers are amplified for children with disabilities and their families. All children are at risk of death and injury in attacks, but especially children who cannot escape on their own either because they do not have access to an assistive device, or because roads have been heavily damaged making the movement on any wheels impossible.
What does fleeing look like for families of people with disabilities?
It’s important to remember that when we are talking about disability, it often means more than one family member. For example, I interviewed A.J., a 27-year-old former wheelchair basketball player. In addition to his own use of a wheelchair, he told me his father has quadriplegia, and his sister is blind. When the family had to escape from northern to southern Gaza because of bombings, A.J. had to carry his 12-year-old cousin, who also has a walking disability, on his lap.
I also talk in this report about the deep psychological harm of armed conflict on children with disabilities and their families, particularly when needing to flee or evacuate.
Many children with disabilities have added psychological trauma of feeling like they are a burden to their families. Imagine having thoughts like that while your family is literally escaping for their lives.
I spoke to a mother of a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, Ghazal, who told me that her daughter begged her and her husband to leave her behind to save themselves. She said that for a few seconds, she did consider leaving Ghazal behind. “It was one of the worst days of my life," she said. “I was confused: whether to stop while we were under bombardment or to walk and leave Ghazal.” Ghazal uses a boot that helps her walk as well as a wheelchair that she lost when the family's home was hit in an attack.
When I spoke with Ghazal, she told me, “That period was the hardest I’ve ever gone through. It feels like black memories I don’t want to hold onto because I don’t want to keep thinking about them. We had no clue where to go. I was a burden on them, an extra load alongside their belongings.”
These stories really illustrate for me the harsh realities of what it’s like for children and adults with disabilities trying to survive a war.
What was it like carrying out the research for this report?
Israel has long denied access to Gaza for Human Rights Watch’s staff based abroad. I knew that to investigate what human rights violations might be occurring, my research had to be done remotely.
However, with Israel’s cuts to electricity, and daily blackouts and disruptions to telecommunications, speaking to people inside Gaza by phone was also difficult. When I would finally be able to reach someone, our calls would often disconnect, and I would need to track them down again later to finish our interviews.
Many people I interviewed were also facing immediate attacks. Sometimes I could hear bombing in the background and they would need to rush off the call to seek shelter. Other times they would take calls in crowded displacement camps with little privacy or had to leave their place of shelter to find connectivity or charge their phones.
This really struck me. Despite the enormous difficulties and dangers people were facing, they still felt it was that important to find a way to share their stories; for the outside world to know what they have been forced to experience.
That is powerful. Doing such difficult research must have been hard for you.
As someone who was a child during the Bosnian war back in the 1990s, I can personally relate to so many of the horrible experiences of war that people in Gaza are living through again right now.
But what’s been really difficult for me was losing one of our longtime disability rights partners in Gaza.
We released a report in November documenting the situation for people with disabilities at the war’s outset. I had interviewed Bader, a father of three children who was blind and who had helped Human Rights Watch with our previous report released in 2020. He told me he was not able to flee because of his disability, and he wasn’t sure how he could get around during the bombardment and protect his family.
On December 7, I learned he was killed in an apparent Israeli attack.
Almost everyone in Gaza has been displaced – by early July, nine out of ten people were displaced, nearly two million people -- and left effectively homeless, their lives have been put on hold. Hala, Ghazal’s mom, tried to paint the picture, “You wake up on a normal day and help your children to get to school and come back home. Then, in an instant, you find yourself fleeing your home. Never to return. You are homeless on the street without even a tent. There is no privacy [in the makeshift camps], and everyone hears your voice even if you whisper. We have become like naked bodies in front of each other. The life we are living now is unbearable and unrecognizable.”
For children with disabilities leaving their home is especially excruciating. Hala explained, “Our home was adaptable for Ghazal. Everything she needed was available at home. She was independent, using the walker. All of that is gone now. “ When I talked about this with Ghazal, she told me she misses her room at home because it held all her memories.
But, it’s not like families and children have been displaced once and are safe now. I check on families there often who tell me they need to flee again. One family has been displaced six times since we first spoke in October. Most are exhausted and concerned they have no safe place left to go. These are the same parents and family members who also told me how they had been proud of their children who were doing well in school or making progress in physiotherapy – reminiscing about small things many people take for granted and hoping for a return to safety and normalcy. Ghazal said she misses her room at home because it held all her memories and she bragged to me how well she used to do in school. She has now lost an entire year of education. Too much has been taken away from people.
Things must be particularly hard for children who lost parents.
Yes. An estimated 20,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents and 17,000 are unaccompanied or separated from their parents. This also resonates with me deeply. I lost my father during the war in Bosnia, and I know how devastating it is for every single child. I also understand what it means for children with disabilities who need even more support from their parents than others.
I interviewed the sister of Nour, a 14-year-old girl with Down Syndrome. Both their parents were killed in an apparent Israeli attack on their home in December. But Nour is not fully aware she lost her parents. She believes they will come home. I can relate to her feelings – as a child it took me years to finally accept my father’s loss and the fact that he wouldn’t show up one day at the door explaining it was all a mistake.
What did other children in Gaza tell you they want?
What they want is simple. Children with disabilities and their families want access to health care, to receive prosthetics and rehabilitation. They want medicine, access to clean water, and proper food. Kids like Ghazal want to go back to school and continue their studies. They want normalcy. They want to go home. “Even though I no longer have a home there, I still wish to return to the north,” Ghazal told me recently.
But most of all, they want safety.
People with disabilities in Gaza need to have their rights protected and be treated with the dignity they deserve.
