According to IRNA, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a report seen by several news agencies wrote that “violence against children in armed conflicts spread extensively in 2023 and increased by a shocking 21 percent”.
The report, which is scheduled to be officially published on Thursday, states that violence leading to the death and injury of children has increased by 35% compared to the previous year.
The report on children and armed conflict, which has also been seen by the Guardian, verified more cases of war crimes against children in the occupied territories than anywhere else, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria and Sudan.
The Guterres report emphasizes, according to media sources that following the developments in the Gaza Strip, violations of children's rights have increased by 155%.
“Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory presents an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children,” says the report which details only those cases that UN investigators were able to verify, so it accounts for just part of the total number of deaths and injuries of children in the course of last year.
In all, the UN verified “8,009 grave violations against 4,360 children” in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank – more than twice the figures for the DRC, the next worst place for violence against children.
According to this report, the Zionist army has cut off children's access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and al-Quds.
“I was shocked by the unprecedented increase in the number of children who were killed, injured and mutilated by the Israeli army and forces in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”. Guterres wrote in his report.
News of Israel’s inclusion on the blacklist follows more than eight months of war on Gaza, in which more than 14,000 children are estimated to be among over 37,000 civilians killed, and comes two days after the Israeli bombing of a UN school in central Gaza, which killed more than 40 Palestinians, many of them children.
The annual assessment due to be presented to the UN General Assembly by Guterres has triggered outrage from the Israeli regime, with the Zionist envoy to the world body was found saying that he was “shocked and disgusted” by the “shameful” decision to include Israel on this year’s list.
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