Currently, over 350 Palestinian children are being held in Israeli detention facilities. The majority are detained under illegal rules of administrative detention. Defence for Children International reported in March 2026 that these children faced ‘high risks of physical and psychological abuse, exploitation, denial of basic needs, lack of due process, separation from family, denial of education, and, ultimately, severe mental and physical harm’. Former child detainees reported ‘being physically, emotionally and sexually abused, humiliated and starved’. Alarmingly, 99% of the Palestinian children reported physical assaults in the period of detention. 83% reported threats against their families and 76% stated they received insufficient food.
Although maltreatment and torture of children by Israeli authorities were well documented before October 2023, and already in 2018 gave rise to Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 2236 (2018) “The treatment of Palestinian minors in the Israeli justice system”, these illegal practices have not stopped and, reportedly, have even intensified after this date, culminating in the case of deliberate starvation of a young Palestinian named Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad in detention.
An aggravating fact is that the International Committee of the Red Cross or United Nations bodies are not allowed to visit these minors. Nor do these children have normal private or even sufficient interactions with their lawyers or families during their detention.
The Assembly should investigate these ongoing and aggravating signals about the inhumane and possible lethal detention conditions of Palestinian children, work effectively to ensure that their fundamental rights are immediately respected by the Israeli government, and put forward concrete actions that States can and should take under the obligations of international law to protect the lives of these young Palestinian prisoners.