Save The Children - Crisis in Middle East

Gaza - Children continue to suffer as rich world meets to discuss aid. As donor governments gather in Sweden to talk about what further humanitarian assistance is needed for Gaza, children in this densely populated area face another day of extreme hardship and suffering, due to a combination of Israeli restrictions and the ongoing freeze on funding imposed by the very governments who are meeting to talk about finding more.

Since 28th June, 44 children have been killed, electricity and water infrastructure has been destroyed and humanitarian assistance has been routinely blocked from getting to those people who need it. Since 15th August, for example, no humanitarian aid at all has been allowed through some gates and even humanitarian workers have had their movements heavily restricted.

Sue Smith, Regional Director of Save the Children UK, said, "Gaza needs more financial support, but donor governments and Israel must first and immediately loosen the stranglehold they have on funds that already exist.

Because of the freeze on aid and tax revenues, and the detention of PA ministers, basic health and sanitation services are collapsing, threatening a public health disaster, and the education system is in chaos from top to bottom.

The Minister of Education is being indefinitely detained, teachers are striking because they haven't been paid for months, and some schools are still being used as camps for displaced people. It is an outrage that the major donors have allowed children to suffer like this for months on end."

Save the Children UK calls on all donors to:

Immediately provide essential funding to allow for the provision of basic services and end the civil service strike, which will have a particularly disastrous affect on the education sector, as school opens on 2 September,
Use all available political and financial pressure to secure immediate and free access to children in need by humanitarian agencies.

Lebanon - Struggling to return to normal
As always it is children who bore the brunt of the war and continue to suffer from its effects. Over 40% of those killed in Lebanon were children and over 400,000 were displaced from their homes during the 34 days of bombing.
Families returned to their homes in southern Lebanon to find their houses destroyed and now face an uncertain future. Children are still at risk from lethal legacies of the conflict such as unexploded bombs and accidents while clearing and playing in rubble from their houses and other buildings. These have already led to the death of at least 3 children since the ceasefire.

personal stories
What happened to Haytham >
Fatima's family struggles to return to normal life>
What children in lebanon said about the conflict >

Safety and security
The end of the war has not meant the end of suffering for children. Unexploded bombs are a real and present danger for children. Towards the end of the war some 4,000 explosive items were dropped daily on southern Lebanon; with a failure rate estimated by the mine action group to be at least 10%. These included cluster bombs, which have a much higher failure rate.

Often brightly coloured and the size of drinks cans, children can mistake these deadly weapons for toys or pick them up for souvenirs. Unexploded bombs are expected to be found under destroyed buildings. As families clear the rubble ? often with the help of children ? further casualties are expected.

The risk of accidents for children is now very high. Villages that have been flattened by intense bombings have become a highly dangerous environment for children to live and play in. This increased risk of physical injury is at a time when health centres are struggling with shortages of medicines, fuel and water, which increases the threat to children?s safety even more.

Coping with trauma
The stress and trauma of the war continue to take their toll on children. Children in the displacement camps showed symptoms such as nightly anxiety and bed-wetting. This fear and stress will continue long after the bombs have stopped falling if children are not provided with a safe and stimulating environment.

In addition to the physical and psychological impacts of the war mentioned above, children moving back to the south have returned to find their villages and homes, and by extension, the foundations of their normal way of life, destroyed.

Kate Peccerillo, Save the Children team leader says: ?Children have returned from the displacement camps to find their homes destroyed and their villages filled with new dangers. Their parents must either keep them inside or risk potentially fatal accidents. When children have nothing to do, there is nothing to take their minds off what happened to them. We need to support these children over the coming weeks and months, with play and educational activities to help them recover and cope with the continued uncertainty in their and their parents? lives.?

Rebuilding children?s lives
Children who have been through a conflict need to get back to a familiar routine as soon as possible. Experience shows that the sooner children return to a sense of normality, the sooner they will recover from the aftermath of conflict and its traumatic effects. Many parents, fearful of the risk of unexploded bombs, are keeping their children indoors or restricting their movement so they can no longer play as children.

This is why child-focused activities, such as playing as a group in safe play areas or going to nursery or school, are so important to protect children. While schools are being rebuilt, we need to provide safe spaces to meet and play or opportunities for informal education, to enable children to put the experiences of this war behind them.

Fifty schools have been destroyed and 300 damaged during the conflict5. It is vital that schools reopen as soon as possible and that teachers, children and peers are assisted with a supportive environment to overcome the stress of the last 2 months and start to rebuild future.
August 2006

Israel
In Israel, the Save the Children Alliance is working through a local partner to address the psychosocial support needs of children who have witnessed violence and are exposed to great risk. Our partner, Al Tufula, has created and distributed 4,000 household activity kits for children and their families in Nazareth, Haifa and surrounding villages. The kits offer a respite for children and families from the violence, stress and anxiety they experience. Save the Children UK has also been asked to finance work with local partners on child trauma in Northern Israel and we are planning to respond to this request.

Save the Children responds where there is the greatest need for children and where communities do not have the ability to respond. We are monitoring the situation in Israel and regularly assess if we can assist in any way in response to the current situation. Israel has a world-class emergency response system that is coping well with the current crisis. The government and the Magen David Adom (Israel?s national chapter of the Red Cross/Red Crescent society) have been supporting those displaced or wounded in this conflict.

Save the Children?s history in the region
Save the Children has worked in the Middle East since 1949, when health services were provided to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Today we support a wide variety of programmes in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. We aim to change for the better the lives of children with disabilities, refugee children and economically destitute children. Our work in recent years has been focused on supporting local partners to address the declining quality of education for poor children and children with disabilities across the region, responding to emergency needs in the occupied Palestinian territories and responding to other emergencies, such as the current crisis, as they arise.

Save the Children fights for children in the UK and around the world who suffer from poverty, disease, injustice and violence.
We work with them to find lifelong answers to the problems they face.

For more information about our work visit our website www.savethechildren.org.uk


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