World Children's Day is celebrated on November 20th annually to commemorate the Declaration of the Rights of the Child by the UN General Assembly on the same day in 1959. It was first established in 1954 as Universal Children's Day.
Since 1990, World Children's Day also marks the anniversary of the date that the UN General Assembly adopted both the Declaration and the Convention on children's rights.
The theme for this year's World Children's Day is For Every Child, Every Right.
However the world is now shakened to the core when children in Gaza are being attacked brutally by aparteheid Israel with no sight of any way to stop the carnage.
Reflecting that a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza at this very moment, it serves as a miserable failure on the whole world to protect children.
The situation in Gaza is one of an unspeakable horrors. More than 1 million children in Gaza are now in a state of life and death.
Every day, children living in Gaza are not safe sleeping in their homes or playing outside, learning in school or seeking medical care at hospitals.
From killing and maiming, to attacks on education and health facilities, and the denial of the humanitarian assistance that they desperately need, children are being caught in discriminate bombings at a staggering scale.
The world has failed to employ all the international tools to halt the horrendous slaughtering of babies in incubators and children in UN shelters and hospitals.
There is no other message for the children of Gaza on the celebration of the World Children's Day on the 20th November this year other than a message of hopelessness for the already more than 5,000 children killed within the last 45 days of Israeli assault on Gaza since 7th October 2023.
Thousands of children are now homeless. Thousands more injured.
The theme For Every Child Every Right means nothing to the children of Gaza who have being completely blockaded for the last 17 years.
The years of strangulation of the basic needs of every child in Gaza is enough to depict the hipocracy of the world agencies.
The UN has done little to attend to the plight of the children in Gaza. Even UN's supervised schools are targeted in the Israeli vicious apartheid military strikes.
According to reports, more than 200 schools had been bombarded during the ongoing assaults in Gaza.
Children were killed and injured in all the air strikes. No space is safe for the children in Gaza. Either at homes or in shelters under the UN, or in open fields, children are all being targeted.
We are outraged by the failure of the international agencies to protect the children in the war zones in Gaza. The indiscriminate air strikes is intentional. Apartheid Israel is the enemy of children.
We call UNICEF to immediately take the necessary action to protect the children in Gaza. Measures to take Israel to be fully accountable in the mass killings of children must be enforced.
We strongly urge the UN Security Council to deploy peace keeping forces immediately in Gaza.
Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid
President Malaysia Consultative Council of Islamic Organizations (MAPIM).
