The UK government is in breach of international law over failing to tackle extreme levels of poverty and destitution in the country, according to a scathing assessment made by the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
It comes after the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently released a report showing that almost 4 million people experienced destitution in 2022, including more than a million children.
Government data recently revealed that 14.4 million people lived in relative poverty in 2021-22 – a million more than the previous year.
With a cost of living crisis and soaring food and fuel prices as well as increasing housing costs, Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, slammed the UK’s woefully inadequate welfare system, citing research showing universal credit payments of £85 a week for single adults over 25 were “grossly insufficient” and described the UK’s main welfare system as “a leaking bucket”.
Relatives carry the body of 8-month-old Ahmed Barhom during a funeral for members of the same family killed in Israel’s bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 6, 2023. (Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
“These children are not worthless casualties,” said one advocate. “These children are as precious as any innocent children. They don’t just deserve to not die. They deserve to live free.”
As journalists in Gaza reported that the Israel Defense Forces bombed the cancer ward of a pediatric hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, advocates for a cease-fire in the blockaded enclave pleaded with powerful Western countries allied with Israel—including the United States—to take action to stop the bombardment that has now killed more than 4,000 children in one month.
Local news outlets Palestinian Hadath, Mayadeen, Haya Jadeeda, and Quds Networkreported that the third floor of al-Rantisi Pediatric Hospital had been hit by an Israeli airstrike, while Reutersreported that eight people had been killed in the attack.
The Daily Beast reported late last month that medical providers in the ward, which is called the Dr.Musa and Suhaila Nasir Pediatric Cancer Department and is the first and only children’s oncology department in Gaza, feared a possible bombing of the hospital, where at least 10 children were receiving in-patient treatment and could not be evacuated when Israeli officials threatened northern Gaza with imminent airstrikes.
“It’s an impossible situation,” said Dr. Zeena Salman, an American pediatric oncologist who has volunteered at the hospital, told The Daily Beast. “There’s a number of patients who are not stable enough to transfer to another hospital. And there may not be enough resources in the hospital.”
Al-Rantisi Hospital has also been providing shelter to around 1,000 civilians since Israel’s total siege in Gaza began last month.
On Sunday, United Nations agencies representing children, women, refugees, and health services issued a joint call warning that “women, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden” of Israel’s attack on the enclave, which it commenced on October 7 after Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage.
While claiming to be targeting Hamas, the IDF has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians since October 7 as it has bombed hospitals, schools, and refugee camps—all while blaming Hamas for civilian casualties by saying the group is using Palestinian people as “human shields.”
“The idea that ‘they were being shielded by children so we murdered the children too’ is so absent of morality, it’s outrageous,” said author Gabrielle Alexa Noel last week in response to an MSNBC segment in which anchor Joy Ann Reid also condemned the claim.
This is why once someone brings up human shields, I know they don’t care.
Because the idea that ‘they were being shielded by children so we murdered the children too’ is so absent of morality, it’s outrageous. https://t.co/b26AfTPtT2
The death toll in Gaza, said Khaled Engindy of the Middle East Institute, is now the equivalent of “killing 1.5 million Americans, including 600,000 children, in the U.S. in under a month.”
Toby Fricker, spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), toldThe Guardian that while it can take time to verify the number of dead children and adults in Gaza as hundreds go missing under rubble after bombings, “the numbers are obviously catastrophic.”
“Verification doesn’t occur in real time, which is why we say ‘reportedly killed,’ but, generally speaking, in all conflicts we substantiate initial estimates and in Gaza they have tended to be pretty consistent,” said Fricker, rebuking claims perpetuated by U.S. President Joe Biden recently that Gaza’s health authorities, which are controlled by Hamas, release inaccurate casualty counts.
The U.N. agencies warned that with roughly 50,000 pregnant people in Gaza, children born during the war will be among the most at risk if the U.S. and other countries supporting Israel’s siege don’t join the growing call for a cease-fire. One hundred and thirty premature babies living in incubators are also at risk.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell also warned last week that for the children who survive the fighting in both Gaza and Israel, the consequences of the trauma they are living through, including the loss of their parents and, in some cases, their entire family will have consequences that “could last a lifetime.”
One UNICEF aid worker stationed in Gaza said last week that her children, aged seven and four, have been “begging for drinkable water and showing signs of severe psychological distress and fear.”
“Since the seventh of this month, my mission in life has become to keep them alive,” the worker, Nesma, told the agency. “I don’t have the luxury to think about my children’s mental health. As a humanitarian worker, I feel absolutely helpless as I cannot provide for my kids with the basic needs of life, let alone the children of Gaza. I keep telling myself, ‘Nesma, keep them alive.’ And when all of this ends, I will provide them with mental support and medical care.”
Sharing the sounds of constant airstrikes on social media, UNICEF said people in areas not experiencing conflict “can choose to turn off this sound. Children in conflicts can’t.”
You can choose to turn off this sound. Children in conflicts can’t.
The children of Gaza and Israel need an immediate ceasefire. Their lives depend upon it. pic.twitter.com/uJt339S7SY
On Sunday, Dr. Omar Suleiman of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research posted a video of two young children desperately searching for their family members after a bombing at Bureij Refugee Camp when they were reunited with their younger brother, who tearfully told a bystander, “I need my mother.”
This video is not gruesome, yet it’s just as heartbreaking. Over 10,000 have now been killed in this genocide, but no one who “survives” this will ever be the same. These children are not collateral damage. These children are not worthless casualties. These children are as… https://t.co/8IN0TlN5Xy
“These children are not worthless casualties,” said Suleiman. “These children are as precious as any innocent children. They don’t just deserve to not die. They deserve to live free.”
Gazan father Muhammed Gouda and his baby daughter Misk lay dead at Aqsa Hospital after an Israeli airstrike hit Deir al-Balah Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images
We apologize. The unprecedented human tragedy in Gaza hurtles on; we can record only pitiless catastrophe afflicting the innocent, its numbers and names. Over 3,400 Palestinian children have been killed and 6,300 wounded; Israel is hitting ravaged hospitals without fuel or light with de-facto bombings; their mad “leader” is quoting Biblical bloodbaths, declaring a “holy mission” of annihilation, and refusing to stop in the name of vengeance: “This is a time for war.” Once again: Murdering children is not “war.”
Writer Ahmed Nehad bitterly documents a grim former “normal” Gaza: Scarce food, water, electricity, hospital beds, jobs, hope. That “normal” was long met with “deafening global silence” until the Oct. 7 killings of Israeli civilians: Then, “the world sat upright and saw the horror of blood spilled in historic Palestine, when the blood took on a different hue.” In just over three weeks, Israel has dropped over 12,000 tons of bombs on Gaza; they have killed over 8,300, but their “true cost, says UNICEF’s Catherine Russell, “will be measured in children’s lives.” Over 420 children a day are killed or injured, roughly one every 10 minutes; over 2,000 children are missing under the rubble, and likely dead; 70% of the dead are children and women; frantic rescue crews must decide between retrieving dead bodies or trying to dig out wounded ones; entire families have been wiped out, leaving young survivors as orphans asking where their parents are; over 16,000 people have been wounded, with little medical help available; over 1.4 million people, more than half the population, have been displaced; and there is “no safe place in Gaza.”
Including, grotesquely, hospitals, where many have sought shelter. Over 50,000 people have taken refuge at al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital; perhaps 12,000 have fled to al-Quds hospital, the next biggest. But under a siege that has blocked all fuel and medicine, and with over a third of the city’s hospitals shut down, the rest are struggling. Doctors dependent on one generator are operating by flashlight, rationing anesthetics, sterilizing with vinegar or laundry detergent, cutting back on dialysis and chemo treatments, having to choose, “like God,” which of two intensive care babies to save. Meanwhile, “If the electricity goes, it just becomes a mass grave.” Israel has ordered hospitals to “evacuate,” knowing well that’s impossible; says Nebal Farsakh of the Palestinian Red Crescent, “Evacuating them means killing them.” Israel has also issued cruelly pointless “warnings” to “evacuate” before bombardments, face-saving mockeries of humanity that “do not make targeting hospitals less of a war crime,” says Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah: “A crime is a crime, even if you make it by appointment.”
On Democracy Now, Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who’s helped provide emergency care in Gaza for 16 years during “very hectic periods” – Israeli assaults in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2014 – cites an “urgent fear” among colleagues Israel will move to bomb hospitals directly, as opposed to its “de facto” bombardments of nearby sites. He particularly condemns Israel’s threat to bomb the (clearly civilian) al-Shifa based on their claim Hamas’ command center is under it – a claim he’s heard since 2009, with no proof forthcoming despite having walked freely there, slept there, filmed there for years. As he anxiously waits in Cairo for entry to Gaza, he praises health workers who remain, “moral compasses” and “cornerstones of a social fabric” that’s been largely ripped away. “It’s completely absurd that (we) have a state army threatening to bomb hospitals and killing children” – 5,300 to date – “in what is called a war,” he says, blasting Biden’s refusal to demand a ceasefire. “This has to stop. I don’t need to use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s enough to say ‘mass murder of civilians.’ We need to stand up and say we don’t accept this.”
As to Netanyahu, his blood lust is far from sated. On Monday, in a chilling speech experts deemed “an explicit call to genocide,” he termed Israel’s slaughter of innocents “a holy mission” and invoked their ancient foe from the Old Testament: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible: ‘Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'” Calls for a ceasefire, he declared with stunning cognitive dissonance, are “a call for Israel (to) surrender to barbarism…The Bible says there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” Still, mournfully, Ahmed Nehad nonetheless pleads for the trifling mercy of a ceasefire, that “a mere handful might endure.” “Grant us the luxury of one last hug,” he writes. “Our end is nigh, rest assured.” Those already dead and documented – name, age, ID number – total 6,747; the number excludes thousands still under rubble or not yet identified. To read the list, you must keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. May their memories be for a blessing.
Injured child at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital after Israeli airstrikes. Photo by Saeed Jaras/APA Images
Israel has intensified its bombings inside the besieged Palestinian territory, repeatedly targeting shelters for the displaced and hospitals which are crowded due to the large number of people injured
United Nations Security Council discusses war in Gaza
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), stated that Israel is carrying out “collective punishment” against Palestinians across the occupied territories and asked the world to ensure that women and children do not become “collateral damage.”
Lazzarini was speaking at an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Monday, October 30, called by the UAE and China to yet again push for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Addressing the session, Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF, said that over 3,400 children had been killed and over 6,300 injured. “This means that more than 420 Palestinian children are being killed or injured in Gaza each day—a number which should shake each of us to our core,” she added.
Israeli forces have been indiscriminately bombing the Gaza strip for the last 25 days. Its forces also launched a ground offensive on Saturday.
The number of total Palestinians killed so far in the Israeli bombings in Gaza crossed 8,300 on Tuesday morning, with over 20,000 Palestinians injured. According to reports, Israel once again used banned white phosphorus on civilians in Gaza on Monday.
According to Lazzarini, more than 70% of all those killed are either children or women. He claimed that an “unprecedented human tragedy is unfolding under our watch” in Gaza which is “unbearable.”
He blamed Israel for forcing millions of Palestinians out of their homes which led to overcrowding in UNRWA shelters. Lazzarini claimed that over 67,0000 Palestinians are forcibly displaced and are now living in schools which have been converted into shelters.
More than half of the population of Gaza, over 1.4 million Palestinians, have been forced out of their homes due to the Israeli offensive since October 7. More and more Palestinians are under threat of losing their homes as Israel continues to target civilian residential areas.
Lazzarini claimed that over 65 staffers with the UNRWA have been killed in Israeli strikes inside the Gaza strip since October 7.
Several relief and rescue staff working with other humanitarian missions in the war-affected region have also been killed in the Israeli bombings which have targeted hospitals, schools, aid distribution centers, and even ambulances.
Israel has also blockaded the supply of food, fuel and medicines into the besieged Palestinian territories since October 9, which has intensified the humanitarian situation there as hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to live without adequate medicines and food. Due to lack of fuel, all essential services such as water supply, cleaning and transportation are blocked, leading to a very dangerous situation.
“No place is safe in Gaza”
The handful of aid allowed through the Rafah border is not enough for the over 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza. Basic necessities such as water, medicine, food and fuel are running out, adding to the panic among the people, Lazzarini said during his presentation to the UN Security Council.
He claimed that no place is safe from Israeli bombings in the small Palestinian enclave.
“My UNRWA colleagues are the only glimmer of hope for the entire Gaza strip, a ray of light as humanity sinks into its darkest hour,” Lazzarini stated.
Lazzarini added that the condition in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is also getting worse everyday. He claimed that Palestinians fatalities in those territories are already highest since 2005, when the UN started recording them.
Over 115 Palestinians including 33 children have been killed by the occupation forces in these territories since October 7, Lazzarini said.
According to the latest figures provided by the Palestinian ministry of health, the total number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem crossed 124 on Tuesday with the Israeli forces shooting of a 70-year-old man in Tubas.
He claimed that the restrictions imposed on the movement of Palestinians and aid workers in the occupied Palestinian territories are impacting basic services such as education and health care.
UNICEF head Russell also noted that Gaza has reported 34 attacks on health facilities, including 21 hospitals, due to which 12 of them can no longer function. She underlined that the Israeli bombings have destroyed 221 schools and over 177,000 housing units so far.
She called for an immediate ceasefire, saying that we need to “put their [children] safety and security at the forefront of our efforts.”
Chinese ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun pointed out that Israel must implement the UN General Assembly resolution passed by over 120 countries on Friday demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.
Jun claimed that Israel has been holding around 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza under a blockade for over 16 years and asked it to fulfill its responsibilities as the occupying power. Jung warned that if the current war continues, it can spiral out of control and a greater catastrophe would be inevitable.
Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya also blamed Israel, saying that “despite unambiguous reaction around the world” Israel has begun its plan to clear the Palestinian enclave by launching ground offensive. He noted that because of the US position to shield Israel at any cost, “the council has been paralyzed.”
Other members of the UN Security Council and the Israeli ambassador also addressed the emergency meeting. Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour claimed that “Gaza is now hell on earth” and underlined that “saving humanity from hell today means the UN to save Palestinians in Gaza.”
Pope Francis during the act of appointment of cardinals in the Vatican Basilica of St. Peter, on September 30, 2023, in Rome, Italy. (Photo: Stefano Spaziani/Europa Press via Getty Images)
“The necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed,” he said.
In his second major address on the climate crisis, Pope Francis called for urgent global action ahead of the COP28 United Nations climate conference.
The pontiff’s remarks came in a papal exhortation published Wednesday morning titled “Laudate Deum” or “praise God.”
“We must move beyond the mentality of appearing to be concerned but not having the courage needed to produce substantial changes,” Francis said.
I invite everyone to accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home and to help make it more beautiful through our own contribution because our own commitment has to do with our personal dignity and highest values #LaudateDeumhttps://t.co/yiPrArGaZF
The pope made waves in 2015 when he published an encyclical on climate and the environment titled Laudato Si, shortly before world leaders negotiated the Paris agreement. An exhortation is a shorter, less prestigious document, according to The Washington Post. In Wednesday’s document, the first he has published on the climate crisis in eight years, Francis reflected on how far the world hadn’t come.
“With the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” he said.
As the world prepares for COP28, he said that international agreements had not so far led to effective action.
“The necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed,” he said. “Consequently, whatever is being done risks being seen only as a ploy to distract attention.”
“In conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively portrayed as ‘radicalized’ tend to attract attention. But in reality they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole.”
He also addressed concerns about the conference being hosted in a major oil-producing country, though he acknowledged that the United Arab Emirates had made significant investments in renewable energy.
“Meanwhile, gas and oil companies are planning new projects there, with the aim of further increasing their production,” he said.
The pope warned about the consequences of inaction:
We know that at this pace in just a few years we will surpass the maximum recommended limit of 1.5° C and shortly thereafter even reach 3° C, with a high risk of arriving at a critical point. Even if we do not reach this point of no return, it is certain that the consequences would be disastrous and precipitous measures would have to be taken, at enormous cost and with grave and intolerable economic and social effects. Although the measures that we can take now are costly, the cost will be all the more burdensome the longer we wait.
Yet he also counseled against abandoning hope, saying it “would be suicidal, for it would mean exposing all humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst impacts of climate change.”
Instead, he argued that hope should be found in structural changes rather than relying entirely on technological fixes like carbon capture.
“We risk remaining trapped in the mindset of pasting and papering over cracks, while beneath the surface there is a continuing deterioration to which we continue to contribute,” he wrote. “To suppose that all problems in the future will be able to be solved by new technical interventions is a form of homicidal pragmatism, like pushing a snowball down a hill.”
Throughout the text, he emphasized climate justice, pointing out that the wealthy world had contributed more to the crisis, while the Global South suffered disproportionately from its impacts. In particular, he called on the United States to alter its energy-intensive lifestyle.
“If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he said.
“Global leaders meeting in Dubai for COP28 must heed the pope’s call to agree to a just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels and a transition to renewable energy, with adequate financial support for impacted countries.”
He also defended climate activists who have been criticized for disruptive tactics.
“In conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively portrayed as ‘radicalized’ tend to attract attention,” he said. “But in reality they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy ‘pressure,’ since every family ought to realize that the future of their children is at stake.”
Several long-time climate advocates welcomed Pope Francis’ remarks.
“The pope’s intervention ahead of the Dubai climate talks is welcome and adds to an increasingly loud chorus of voices demanding that countries tackle the root cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels,” Mariam Kemple Hardy, global campaigns manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement. “The pope is right to point out the growing gap between the urgent need to phase out all fossil fuels and the fact that countries and the oil and gas industry are doubling down on new production that is incompatible with a livable climate.”
“Global leaders meeting in Dubai for COP 28 must heed the Pope’s call to agree to a just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels. Unless it does so, COP28 will be a failure.”https://t.co/724dTQqaTo
Hardy also echoed the pope’s emphasis climate justice, calling out wealthy nations for continuing to exploit fossil fuels.
“Global leaders meeting in Dubai for COP28 must heed the pope’s call to agree to a just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels and a transition to renewable energy, with adequate financial support for impacted countries. Unless it does so, COP28 will be a failure,” Hardy said.
350.org and Third Act co-founder Bill McKibben hoped that the pope’s message might succeed where others had failed.
“The work of spiritual leaders around the world may be our best chance of getting hold of things,” McKibben toldThe Guardian. “Yes, the engineers have done their job. Yes, the scientists have done their job. But it’s high time for the human heart to do its job. That’s what we need this leadership for.”
