28/07/2014 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“Whilst more and more children are dying and being wounded in Gaza, neither the two conflict parties, nor the international community are taking effective action to protect the most vulnerable in this conflict” said Stella Kyriakides (Cyprus, EPP/CD), General Rapporteur on Children of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). With her statement, she reacted to the latest events in the Gaza Strip where a UN school was shelled a few days ago, killing 15 and injuring around 200 displaced persons having taken shelter there, many of them children.
“Children both in Gaza and in Israel are being adversely affected by the war”, the General Rapporteur pointed out, calling upon both conflict parties “to immediately follow the UN Security Council’s appeal for “an immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire” in order to allow for assistance to be delivered to the Palestinian people and in particular to the children who are left dying and totally unprotected”. She recalled that since the beginning of the conflict on 7 July, over 1 030 Palestinian civilians had been killed, out of which 218 children and a great majority of whom under 12, according to official Unicef data.