Gaza’s child workforce

Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip has largely obliterated its educational institutions and recreation centers, with the few remaining now serving as shelters for the displaced. As such, and given the dire economic situation of the widely destroyed strip, many children, mostly boys, have begun working to make a hard-earned living. Children work in all of Gaza’s markets, shelter zones, and destroyed areas to which residents have returned. In Deir al-Balah, which has become the strip's economic center for the trade of all goods and foodstuffs, many children work in the markets, taking on jobs usually only held by adults.

By way of example, the woes of war have made eleven-year-old Fadi from Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood an itinerant vendor of cold drinking water throughout Deir al-Balah’s vast marketplaces. Sisters Nour and Istabraq in Mawasi are always at the Nus square, selling bread made by their mother in their tent a few meters away. In just about all areas of the southern Gaza Strip, you will find children who have resorted to selling cigarettes to provide a living for their siblings and a parent after having lost the other in Israel’s ongoing military aggression.