By October 2025, at least 20,179 Palestinian children had been killed and another 44,143 injured in Gaza. More than 5,000 children under the age of five were among the dead. Over 1,000 infants under one year old lost their lives, including approximately 420 newborn babies.
These figures appear in a new report by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry, released in June 2026. Titled “The Essence of Childhood Has Been Destroyed,” the 94-page report paints one of the bleakest pictures yet of the human cost of the war in Gaza.
The report’s conclusion is stark: Palestinian children have suffered not only unprecedented death and injury, but also the destruction of the very conditions necessary for childhood itself.
A War Measured in Children’s Lives
Before October 2023, approximately half of Gaza’s population was under the age of 18. According to the report, children accounted for roughly 30 percent of all those killed during the conflict and 26 percent of those injured.
The Commission notes that this represents a significant increase compared to previous Gaza wars. During the 2008-09 and 2014 conflicts, children constituted approximately 24 percent of conflict-related fatalities. The current conflict has therefore seen children die at a substantially higher rate.
Perhaps even more alarming is what remains unknown. The report cites estimates suggesting that 5,160 children may still be buried beneath rubble, while thousands more remain missing or unaccounted for.
For the Commission, these figures reveal not isolated tragedies but a pattern of devastation affecting an entire generation.
The World’s Most Dangerous Place to Be a Child
The report repeatedly references UNICEF’s description of Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”
The reasons become clear throughout its findings.
The Commission argues that Israel’s extensive use of explosive weapons in densely populated civilian areas has produced catastrophic consequences for children. Entire residential neighbourhoods have been levelled. Family homes have collapsed with children trapped inside. Schools, shelters, hospitals, and refugee camps have repeatedly found themselves caught in the line of fire.
The report states that children are physiologically more vulnerable to blast injuries than adults. Their smaller bodies, thinner skin, and developing organs make them significantly more likely to suffer fatal injuries from explosions.
As a result, Gaza’s youngest residents have paid a disproportionately high price.
The Children Who Survived
For thousands of children, survival came with lifelong consequences.
The report documents widespread cases of traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord damage, blindness, hearing loss, severe burns, and amputations.
Within just the first three months of the conflict, UNICEF estimated that more than 1,000 children had undergone one or more limb amputations.
By April 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Health had documented approximately 846 child amputees, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all recorded amputations.
The Commission notes that many of these children will require years of reconstructive surgeries, prosthetic limbs, rehabilitation, and specialised medical care.
Yet Gaza’s healthcare system has largely collapsed.
Doctors interviewed for the report described performing surgeries without adequate equipment and, in some cases, without anaesthesia. One account details a 17-year-old girl whose leg was amputated inside her home because military operations made it impossible to reach a hospital.
The report also cites UN findings that Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world.
A Generation Living with Disability
Before the war, approximately 90,000 children in Gaza were already living with disabilities.
The report estimates that between October 2023 and September 2025, another 21,000 children acquired new disabilities as a direct result of the conflict.
In addition, approximately 40,500 children suffered war-related injuries.
The consequences extend far beyond the battlefield. Children who lost limbs, eyesight, hearing, or mobility now face enormous barriers to education, healthcare, and daily life.
Many cannot access prosthetics, wheelchairs, hearing aids, or rehabilitation services due to shortages and the destruction of medical infrastructure.
Childhood Under Siege
The report argues that the dangers facing children were not limited to bombs and bullets.
It examines the effects of prolonged siege conditions, shortages of food, restrictions on aid, and the collapse of essential services.
Investigators describe widespread malnutrition, dehydration, and disease outbreaks among children.
Hospitals struggled to treat preventable illnesses. Clean drinking water became scarce. Medical supplies dwindled. Vaccination programmes were disrupted.
For newborns and pregnant women, the situation proved particularly dangerous.
The report links attacks on healthcare facilities and shortages of medical resources to rising rates of premature births, neonatal complications, miscarriages, and infant mortality.
The Death of Education
While the physical destruction of Gaza has been widely documented, the report also focuses on a less visible casualty: education.
According to the Commission, Gaza’s educational system has been effectively dismantled.
Schools have been destroyed, damaged, converted into shelters, or rendered inaccessible by ongoing military operations.
Millions of school days have been lost. Entire cohorts of children have gone months, and in some cases years, without meaningful access to education.
The consequences will likely be felt long after the war ends.
Trauma Beyond Measurement
Not every wound appears in casualty statistics.
The report devotes an entire section to children’s mental health.
Many children interviewed described living with constant fear, anxiety, grief, depression, and hopelessness. Thousands have witnessed the deaths of parents, siblings, and friends.
Others have been displaced repeatedly, separated from their families, or left orphaned.
The Commission concludes that the psychological consequences of the conflict may endure for decades.
It warns that many children are growing up without a sense of safety, stability, or confidence in the future.
Legal Conclusions
The report’s legal findings are among its most consequential.
The Commission concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conduct documented during the conflict may amount to crimes including:
- Wilful killing
- Extermination
- Persecution
- Torture
- Sexual and gender-based violence
- Attacks on healthcare facilities
- Attacks on schools
- Violations of international humanitarian law
The report also reiterates concerns regarding conditions imposed on Gaza’s civilian population that threaten children’s survival and development.
These findings are likely to remain the subject of intense international legal and political debate.
More Than Statistics
It is easy to become numb to numbers as large as 20,179 dead children.
Yet the report repeatedly reminds readers that each statistic represents an individual life interrupted. A child who once attended school. A child who dreamed of becoming a doctor, teacher, athlete, or artist. A child who had favourite games, favourite foods, and favourite people.
The report’s title is not merely rhetorical.
After documenting more than 20,000 child deaths, tens of thousands of injuries, thousands of amputations, and the collapse of education, healthcare, and family life, the Commission reaches a devastating conclusion:
For many Palestinian children, the essence of childhood itself has been destroyed.
