“They have many symptoms,” says Ibrahim, describing how trauma is manifesting daily in children in Gaza. “Being attached to their parents to the point that they don’t want to leave the place they are in – such as a tent. Severe anxiety and fear. Going to the toilet a lot – involuntary urination, basically.
“They don’t want to participate in activities. They can’t sleep, they’re having trouble eating. Sometimes it can escalate to the point where a child becomes catatonic. They can’t speak. They can’t connect to family members because of severe trauma. Some have become very angry, defensive, aggressive. Some also have speech impediments – they can’t talk; they stutter.”
Ibrahim and his fellow frontline emergency protection officers see these symptoms every day in the tented shelters, camps and cities in their work for War Child, which offers mental health services and educational help to children in Gaza and is one of this year’s three Guardian and Observer appeal charities.
There are children such as one recently seen by Mohammed, an emergency response officer. Identified as severely traumatised, the boy was receiving one-to-one specialist counselling in the corner of a crowded shelter that was home to 3,000 people. “He can communicate only by his drawings. He is mute. He does not have the ability to talk because of his panic from the war. He is six years old,” says Mohammed, who, like his colleagues, is speaking to the Observer via video link from Gaza and through an interpreter. “It’s very hard for anybody to imagine.”
Then there are those who have lost their parents in bombings in which children have also been injured, sometimes losing limbs. According to Unicef, 17,000 children are now unaccompanied and separated in Gaza, and vulnerable to myriad threats including physical and sexual abuse and exploitation.
Ibrahim says: “There hasn’t been a day when I don’t meet one or two kids who have been orphaned, who have been separated from their families. Recently I met three. We found them in the street at 1am. During a war! With all the dangers around them, all the threats. Even from the stray dogs in the streets.” The oldest was 10 and the youngest was a girl of six with a disability. The search for their families continues.
War Child provides psychosocial emergency first aid in many forms. It brings children together in the tented camps with a trained facilitator to play games, do art, sing songs and participate in stress-relieving group activities. It holds sessions for caregivers, usually mothers, on how to support their children. Children identified as displaying complex trauma are referred for more specialist support at each site.
The charity sets up temporary learning spaces imparting teaching-in-crisis skills to those teaching informally where there are now no schools, and providing education kits with whiteboards, pens, pencils and speakers. Sourcing stationery and learning materials is challenging and expensive.
As well as its specialist psychosocial and educational aid, in this conflict War Child is focused on providing basic needs wherever possible, “because you can’t offer psychological support to a child who is hungry or education to a child who is cold”, says Mohammed.
Mohanad, an emergency project officer, says: “We are 2 million people living in 20% of Gaza. We are talking about very harsh conditions, especially this winter.” Most are living in tents and in “very harsh financial situations”, he says. About 80% of hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed. There is little medical equipment, and women and children bear the brunt of injuries, he adds. “What the people of Gaza are living through right now, words cannot encompass what is happening. There is not even one centimetre that is safe in Gaza.”
War Child and its local partners are a lifeline for more than 116,600 children. Its support – which it says has reached more than 180,000 people so far – includes food, clean water, shelter, warm clothing and blankets, hygiene kits and period products.
It is addressing the mental trauma of more than 11,000 children and training more than 1,300 local counsellors. It is scaling up its biggest emergency response, totalling €25m (£20m), to reach more than 1 million children across Gaza and the West Bank over three years, with a programme to support basic needs, protection, education and mental health.
Nida, an emergency technical assistant, works daily with women and children. “Without the services we offer, especially the psychological services for women and children, many of these people would escalate into actual madness at some point,” she says. “Children are suffering from severe malnutrition. They can’t access food. They are very, very thin.”
She said women are bearing the brunt of the war, trying to take care of their children and forced to cook scarce food on wood fires rather than with gas or electricity.
Humanitarian workers in Gaza face closed checkpoints and a shortage of fuel, which restricts access to those in need. The Israeli government banning the UN agency Unrwa, on which almost the entire population of Gaza depends for basic necessities, from 28 January 2025 has been described as a “catastrophe”.
The personal risks faced by War Child’s workers are immense. All fear for their safety, as other NGO workers have died in Israeli attacks on vehicles. Those the Guardian and Observer spoke to have all been displaced 10 or 12 times; they have all lost loved ones.
“I lost around 100 loved ones, and my cousins and my uncles and my aunt are still in the rubble after one year,” says Mohammed, who has himself been injured.
Ibrahim says: “What people don’t appreciate is that, leaving my family behind, I’m anxious all day because at any moment they could be bombed at home while I am at work.”