Escalating hostilities are crippling the provision of health care across Gaza and Israeli Defense Forces to be listed in the Children and Armend Conflict annual report – 7 June 2024 Daily Press Briefing by Spokesperson for the Secretary-General – (Excerpts)

7 June 2023

(Excerpt)

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

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**Children and Armed Conflict

I’ve also been getting quite a few questions from a number of you this morning on the issue regarding the children and armed conflict report, and all the news that’s been broken out in the last hours especially.

The annual report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict is due to go to the Security Council on 14 June, which is next Friday; that is the day that is scheduled and asked for by the Security Council.

As per usual practice, an advance copy will be delivered to Security Council members on that date.

The report will be officially published on 18 June, with a press conference by Virginia Gamba, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on the issue.

The report will then be discussed in an open debate that will take place on 26 June.

And just to remind you about the context of the report, this is an initiative of Member States — more specifically of Security Council Members — who have tasked Secretaries-General to report annually on this, based on a well-established methodology.

Coming back to this morning’s events, earlier today, our chief of staff, Courtenay Rattray, called the Permanent Representative of Israel, Gilad Erdan.  The call was a courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed on the annex of the report.  It is done to give those countries a heads-up and avoid leaks.

Ambassador Erdan’s video recording of that phone call and the partial release of that recording on twitter, is shocking and unacceptable and, frankly, something that I’ve never seen in my 24 years serving this Organization.

**Occupied Palestinian Territory

Turning to the situation in Gaza, our colleagues from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report that escalating hostilities are crippling the provision of health care across Gaza, with supply shortages and reduced bed capacity reported widely.

Partners working on the health response warn that the few hospitals that are still partially functioning in Deir al Balah area, in the central Gaza, are increasingly overwhelmed by the influx of casualties from ongoing air strikes.  The situation is especially severe at Al Aqsa hospital, with one of the facility’s two generators now out of service.

According to our colleagues at the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1,200 patients — that’s an average of 50 each day — have been unable to leave Gaza to receive treatment abroad, as of 30 May.

WHO estimates that at least 14,000 patients need medical evacuation to medical facilities outside of the Gaza Strip, with this number expected to increase due to shrinking hospital bed capacity.

Meanwhile, UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) reports that the ongoing conflict and restrictions in Gaza are preventing families from meeting their children’s food needs.  Nine of every ten children in Gaza are experiencing [severe] food poverty, surviving on two or fewer food groups per day.  That’s according to data that UNICEF collected between December and April.

As we told you yesterday, the Secretary-General condemned the Israeli air strike on an UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) school in Nuseirat Refugee Camp, sheltering some 6,000 IDPs (internally displaced people), in which more than 30 people were reportedly killed, that includes 14 children.  We reiterate again that UN premises are inviolable, including during armed conflict, and they must be protected by all parties to the conflict and not used for military operations.

And also, in a social media post yesterday, our Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, stressed that the rules of war must be respected, and civilians must be protected.  That full post is available online.

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