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Emergency alert (267k) |
2009 opened to the largest Israeli military operations in Gaza since 1967. By the time unilateral ceasefires were declared on 18 January, the Gaza War had killed over 1,400 Gazans - including at least 350 children - and injured thousands more. Some 280 schools were damaged or destroyed, along with critical water and sanitation infrastructure and almost half of all health facilities. UNICEF works with governments, stakeholders and partners to promote and fulfill children’s rights, reaching out first to especially vulnerable and marginalised children. In the OPT, UNICEF focuses on policy and institutional support to the Palestinian Authority, and together with a broad range of partners, implements humanitarian and development programmes designed to assist, protect and empower children and their families. Programmes focus on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); child survival and development; child protection; education; and adolescent development and participation.
More than 3,500 homes were obliterated and around 50,000 sustained minor to major damages. Twelve months on, thousands of families are still living amid rubble and crumbling infrastructure due to an Israeli blockade imposed in June 2007 that bars everything but limited supplies of essential humanitarian goods from entering Gaza. Only 41 truckloads of construction materials (0.05 per cent of pre-blockade flows) have been permitted entry since the Gaza War.
Throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) almost 12,000 children under five years old still die from preventable causes each year, as do more than 1,800 children under 12 months old. Two thirds of households are not connected to a sewage network, meaning water is discharged into the environment partially or totally untreated. The education system has suffered with learning outcomes plummeting for the past two years.UNICEF’s response
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