A scene from the Gaza Strip. Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr. Creative Commons.
We live in a time when the death and injury of children in conflicts are witnessed with sickening regularity through the world’s media. In some locations such violence continues unabated for years or even decades. Gaza is an extreme example of this profoundly worrying trend. The thousands of children in this narrow strip of land who have been killed, maimed and denied their basic rights as a direct result of political violence are an enduring testimony to the inadequacy of child protection measures.
Child protection is only now emerging as a specialised sub-field of humanitarian endeavour. However, the moral injunction to protect the young from the worst effects of conflict is evident across time and culture. Currently the various agencies engaged in this work operate in broad accordance with the definition of child protection as efforts “to prevent and respond to violence, exploitation and abuse”.
