UNRWA Blog – The clock is ticking fast for starving children in Gaza: will the world take action to save them?

14 July 2025

By Juliette Touma, the UNRWA Director of Communications across all areas of operations. She visited Gaza several times during and before the war. 

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In 2022, when I had the great pleasure of going in and out of Gaza, I would visit children in UNRWA schools. Immaculately dressed, healthy looking, smiling, eager to learn, jumping up and down in the school playground to the sound of music.

Back then, Gaza was already under a blockade for more than 15 years, food was however available on the markets through imports via Israel, and locally farmed produce. UNRWA was also giving food aid to over 1 million people.

Images of Adam and Ali were quickly pushed to the back of my memory until a few weeks ago when they suddenly reappeared.

Our Gaza teams started sending alarming photos of emaciated babies. The rates of malnutrition are rapidly increasing, spreading across the Gaza Strip. According to WHO more than 50 children died of malnutrition since the siege began on 2 March.  UNRWA has meanwhile screened over 242,000 children in the Agency’s clinics and medical points across the war-torn enclave, covering over half the children under the age of five in Gaza.  One in ten children screened is malnourished.

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Ahlam is seven months old; her family was displaced every month since the war began, in search for non-existing safety. Shocked and her body weakened, Ahlam is severely malnourished. Like many babies in Gaza, her immune system has been damaged by trauma, constant forced displacement, lack of clean water, poor hygiene, and very little food.

Ahlam can survive, but will she?

There are very little therapeutic supplies to treat children with malnutrition as basics are scarce in Gaza. The Israeli Authorities have imposed a tight siege blocking the entry of food, medicines, medical and nutritional supplies and hygiene material include soap. While the siege is sometimes eased, UNRWA (the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza) has not been allowed to bring in humanitarian assistance since 2 March.

Last week, Salam, another malnourished baby died. She was a few months old. When she finally reached the UNRWA clinic, it was too late.

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Meanwhile, eight children queuing for therapeutic support against malnutrition were killed when the Israeli Forces hit the clinic they were in. One of my colleagues who drove past the clinic a few minutes later told me she saw mothers looking out into the abyss, weeping in silence, just like Adam did.

Why should babies die of malnutrition in the 21^st century, especially when it’s totally preventable?

At UNRWA, we have over 6,000 trucks of food, hygiene supplies and medicines outside of Gaza waiting for the green light to go in. The aid will mainly help little girls like Ahlam. UNRWA also has more than 1,000 health workers who can provide boys and girls with specialised nutritional services.

Amid the daily livestream of horrors we get from Gaza on our screens, one cannot help but ask how many more Ahlam’s and Salam’s have to die before taking action?

How much longer until a ceasefire is reached so that bombs stop falling on emaciated and dying children….?