People queue with pots to receive charity meals from a kitchen in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 24, 2025. (Photo by Bashar Taleb / AFP)
Geneva: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday that the Israeli occupation forces' closure of the Gaza Strip's border crossings will increase the suffering of children and families, denouncing the use of facial recognition technology as a precondition for aid access.
"The only thing entering Gaza now is bombs, while everything necessary for a child's survival has been banned, and in many ways, proudly banned," UNICEF spokesperson, James Elder said in remarks. He considered this situation to represent "a profound moral collapse, and no one will escape the price of this indifference."
He stressed that using humanitarian aid as bait to force displacement, particularly from the north to the south, would create an impossible choice between displacement and death. He explained that the plan presented by the occupation to the humanitarian community deprives the most vulnerable groups unable to reach the proposed military zones of aid, and exposes their family members to the risk of being targeted or caught in the crossfire as they travel to and from these areas.
A Palestinian boy salvages bread from a makeshift bakery hit in Israeli strikes at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on May 8, 2025. (Photo by Eyad Baba / AFP)
He pointed out that according to the proposed plan, only 60 aid trucks will be delivered to the Gaza Strip per day, representing one-tenth of what was delivered during the ceasefire. He considered this "insufficient to meet the needs of 2.1 million people, including 1.1 million children."
Elder also expressed deep concern about the proposed use of facial recognition technology as a precondition for aid delivery, adding that screening and monitoring beneficiaries "for intelligence and military purposes violates all humanitarian principles," calling for the lifting of the closure and the entry of humanitarian aid to save lives in the Gaza Strip.
On several occasions UNICEF revealed that the situation of children in Gaza is on the verge of catastrophe, calling for the occupation to allow the entry of life-saving aid to the population of the Strip.
