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STORY: UNGA80 / PALESTINIAN CHILDREN
TRT: 04:51
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 24 SEPTEMBER 2025, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Aerial shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters
24 SEPTEMBER 2025, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, conference room, moment of silence
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Fletcher Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“In case it needs repeating, children everywhere should have water, food, safety, health, shelter, education, and children in Gaza have as much rights as children anywhere else. But in Gaza, children are killed queuing for water; in Gaza, children are starved even though the supplies and networks are at the borders; in Gaza, a famine has been caused by cruelty justified by revenge, enabled by indifference, sustained by complicity. In Gaza, as we heard, a child has been killed on average every hour for almost two years. In Gaza, the lucky children sleep in tents. In Gaza, shelters are bombed, and schools have become sites of horror, depriving over 700,000 children of their right to education.”
4. Wide shot, conference room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Fletcher Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“The rules of war were built over decades to protect civilians and ensure a basic minimum of humanity. And it's those rules that are being corroded here. Day after day after day. We've heard Israeli ministers talk openly of flattening Gaza, forcing its people out permanently, annihilation, denying food aid. Let's not bequeath children a lawless world stripped of dignity and hope. We do not have to choose between condemning the starvation of children in Gaza and demanding the unconditional release of hostages. We do not have to choose between fighting antisemitism and holding Israel to the same laws as everyone else.”
6. Wide shot, conference room, applause
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“At the start of the war, I visited a school in Rafah hosting thousands of displaced people. I'm still haunted by the eyes of a little girl pleading at the time for a piece of bread and a sip of water. A school had been transformed into a shelter, and she was now learning to survive in her own school. Since then, the children of Gaza have continued to spiral downward into the abyss of hell. Every day for nearly two years, the equivalent of a classroom full of children have been killed. And for the survivors, returning to school is a distant dream.”
8. Wide shot, conference room
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“Education has always been a prized possession for Palestine refugees. The only asset from which, until now, they could not truly be dispossessed. Attacks on education are attacks on the identity and the future of Palestinian children.”
10. Wide shot, conference room, applause
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Ted Chaiban, Deputy Executive Director, Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, UNICEF:
“Today, as Israel escalates its military offensive, the famine that grips Gaza City risks spreading southward. This should never happen. The children I met are not victims of a natural disaster. They are being starved, bombed, and displaced. And they are dying one by one in full view of the world. And while Gaza consumes our focus, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, should not be forgotten. Since October 2023, 223 children have been killed in the West Bank.”
12. Wide shot, conference room
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Palestine:
“My heart is full with pain trying to flash the pictures and the images of the Palestinian children that we lose every day. And I have nightmares. And I wake up in the middle of the night hoping that this is not real, these are dreams, but unfortunately, they are real.”
14. Wide shot, conference room
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Palestine:
“We have to double our efforts in order to save the lives of those who are still alive. That's why we need a ceasefire. We need it now. We need to protect those who are alive. We have to give them all that humanitarian needs to keep them alive. And we have to widen the door for a political horizon.”
16. Wide shot, conference room, applause
The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher today (24 Sep) said, “children in Gaza have as much rights as children anywhere else,” but instead, “shelters are bombed, and schools have become sites of horror.”
Speaking at an event on the margins of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, Fletcher said, “children everywhere should have water, food, safety, health, shelter, education.”
In Gaza, he said, “children are killed queuing for water; in Gaza, children are starved even though the supplies and networks are at the borders; in Gaza, a famine has been caused by cruelty justified by revenge, enabled by indifference, sustained by complicity. In Gaza, as we heard, a child has been killed on average every hour for almost two years. In Gaza, the lucky children sleep in tents.”
Fletcher said, “the rules of war were built over decades to protect civilians and ensure a basic minimum of humanity. And it's those rules that are being corroded here. “
Day after day after day, he said, “we've heard Israeli ministers talk openly of flattening Gaza, forcing its people out permanently, annihilation, denying food aid. Let's not bequeath children a lawless world stripped of dignity and hope.”
Also speaking at the Call to Action for Palestinian Children in the West Bank and Gaza event, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said, “at the start of the war, I visited a school in Rafah hosting thousands of displaced people. I'm still haunted by the eyes of a little girl pleading at the time for a piece of bread and a sip of water. A school had been transformed into a shelter, and she was now learning to survive in her own school. Since then, the children of Gaza have continued to spiral downward into the abyss of hell. Every day for nearly two years, the equivalent of a classroom full of children have been killed. And for the survivors, returning to school is a distant dream.”
Lazzarini said, “education has always been a prized possession for Palestine refugees. The only asset from which, until now, they could not truly be dispossessed. Attacks on education are attacks on the identity and the future of Palestinian children.”
For his part, the Deputy Executive Director, Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations at UNICEF, Ted Chaiban,
Said, “as Israel escalates its military offensive, the famine that grips Gaza City risks spreading southward. This should never happen. The children I met are not victims of a natural disaster. They are being starved, bombed, and displaced. And they are dying one by one in full view of the world.”
“While Gaza consumes our focus,” Chaiban said, “the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, should not be forgotten. Since October 2023, 223 children have been killed in the West Bank.”
Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour, speaking without a written speech, said, “my heart is full with pain trying to flash the pictures and the images of the Palestinian children that we lose every day. And I have nightmares. And I wake up in the middle of the night hoping that this is not real, these are dreams, but unfortunately, they are real.”
Mansour said, “we have to double our efforts in order to save the lives of those who are still alive. That's why we need a ceasefire. We need it now. We need to protect those who are alive. We have to give them all that humanitarian needs to keep them alive. And we have to widen the door for a political horizon.”
The event was convened by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Kingdom of Belgium, and the European Union
