"Art can play an important role in supporting children’s healthy development during conflicts and emergencies." UNRWA works

Friends Lareen (left) and Layan (right) exhibited their artwork at UNRWA’s Asmaa Shelter in Gaza City. © June 2026 UNRWA PhotoThe children's art was exhibited in five temporary spaces across the Gaza Strip. © June 2026 UNRWA PhotoA total of 250 children

 UNRWA

@UNRWA

Through art, Lareen and Layan are finding ways to express their thoughts, hopes and emotions. 

They were among 1,000 children in #Gaza who took part in UNRWA-supported art activities that provided a safe and encouraging space for creativity and self-expression. 

With support from the European Union, these activities help children explore their talents and share their stories. 

Read the full story: https://unrwa.org/newsroom/photos/paint-paper-and-pencils-help-children-gaza-strip-cope-trauma-and-loss 

 #UNRWAworks  

#FundUNRWA 

https://x.com/UNRWA/status/2108561074555424976 

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Paint, paper, and pencils help children in the Gaza Strip cope with trauma and loss

02 September 2026

A steady sound of voices fills UNRWA’s Asmaa shelter-turned-exhibition space in Beach Camp in Gaza City. As people move through the crowded room, they pause to smile, point, and take photos of the colourful artwork that brightens the once-white walls. Standing among them are 11-year-old friends Lareen and Layan. The young students-turned-artists proudly show off their posters and upcycled cardboard figures.

"I love drawing flowers," says Layan. "One day, I want to become an architect."

Alongside 1,000 other children living in UNRWA shelters across the Gaza Strip, the young friends have participated in art activities organised by the Agency. Under the supervision and guidance of UNRWA psychosocial counsellors, the students have learned how to express their thoughts, aspirations, and emotions through art, creating posters, drawings, artistic models, and sculptures.

"We were so happy to participate. We collected things from around us and learned how to turn them into something beautiful. We made new friends and spent time together in a healthy environment, away from the destruction around us," says Lareen, who is among the 250 children selected to exhibit their art in one of the five temporary exhibition spaces across the Gaza Strip.

The art activities and exhibitions were made possible through funding from European Union Humanitarian Aid, which provided the paint, paper, and other materials needed for drawing, colouring, and crafting, as well as the psychosocial support that helped create a safe and encouraging environment for the participants.

Art can play an important role in supporting children’s healthy development during conflicts and emergencies. Through art, they learn how to express complex emotions they might otherwise find difficult to articulate, while strengthening their confidence and fostering a sense of normalcy. For children in the Gaza Strip, opportunities to learn, play, and express themselves have been disrupted by more than two years of war, repeated displacement, and the loss of loved ones.

Wael, an UNRWA focal point for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in the Gaza Strip, has witnessed how the art activities have made a difference.

“The children transformed their feelings, experiences, and aspirations into powerful artworks that speak of both their struggles and their hope for a better future. The initiative gave them a voice, while strengthening their well-being and helping them rebuild hope in the most challenging circumstances.”

The project also attracted older children eager to develop their artistic talents.

For 16-year-old UNRWA school graduate Khadija, living in the Asmaa shelter in Beach Camp, art became a means of documenting the realities faced by children in the Gaza Strip. Having lost both her home and her brother during the war, she used her artwork to reflect on the experiences that continue to shape her community.

"I saw a child whose arms had been amputated playing hopscotch in the street," she recalls. "These are the real losses in life, the moments of joy that disappear. We have been deprived of everything. I want to express the suffering of the children..." READ MORE  https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/photos/paint-paper-and-pencils-help-children-gaza-strip-cope-trauma-and-loss

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WCNSF — Wounded Child, No Surviving Family... Medical workers [in GAZA PALESTINE] began using it to describe children who arrive at hospitals wounded, but with no surviving family left to find them. Nothing can make the deliberate or indiscriminate harming of children acceptable. There are an estimated 30,000 WCNSF in Gaza, they are not statistics. They are someone's whole world — until there is no one left.

WCNSF — Wounded Child, No Surviving Family GAZA Palestine

 

Zara Zhar

@Boudicca61AD

WCNSF — Wounded Child, No Surviving Family 

This is an acronym being used in Gaza that should never have had to exist: 

Medical workers began using it to describe children who arrive at hospitals wounded, but with no surviving family left to find them. 

And let’s not hide behind vague language. 

These are Palestinian children being wounded and killed amid Israeli military bombardment and ground operations in Gaza to this day. 

UNICEF has repeatedly documented children killed and injured in Israeli strikes, including children sheltering in homes, schools and makeshift shelters. 

Some children survive the strike that destroys their family. 

They wake up in a hospital bed with injuries they may carry for the rest of their lives — and discover that there is nobody left to take them home. 

No mother. 

No father. 

No brother. 

No sister. 

No family member coming through the hospital doors asking: 

“Where is my child?” 

 UNICEF has documented cases in which children were the sole survivors of attacks that killed their entire families. 

This is what WCNSF means. 

Not an abstract statistic. 

Not a political talking point. 

A child who survived — and everyone who loved them did not. 

Nothing can make the deliberate or indiscriminate harming of children acceptable. 

The scale of destruction documented in Gaza demands scrutiny, accountability and protection for civilians. 

A wounded child should have a family rushing to their bedside. 

They should not have to become a five-letter acronym because everyone they loved was killed. 

WCNSF. 

Five letters created because ordinary language could no longer keep up with the scale of the suffering. 

No child should ever have to become a category. 

No hospital should have to need a term for a wounded child with nobody left to come for them. 

Remember the children behind those letters. 

There are an estimated 30,000 WCNSF in Gaza, they are not statistics. 

They are someone's whole world — until there is no one left. 

https://x.com/Boudicca61AD/status/2105767757589680171 

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"People talk about post-traumatic stress, but for us, there is no post-era; the trauma is ongoing. Keeping our people safe in such a context is incredably difficlut, especially when you see your mother in pieces, your father under rubble, and your friends gone. Such experiences profoundly affect your brain and emotions, and we must help our people to be resilient in this harsh reality." -Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb of Palestine

Bright Stars of Bethlehem  https://www.instagram.com/bright_stars_of_bethlehem/?g=5

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Ongoing Nakba in Gaza, Palestine: People inspect the remains of a residential building hit by an Israeli airstrike... Listen to the stories of Gaza’s women to fully grasp the horrors Israel is inflicting

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip

People inspect the remains of a residential building hit by an Israeli airstrike

Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

 https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2026/may/24/protests-parades-and-an-erupting-geyser-photos-of-the-weekend?CMP=share_btn_url#img-8

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Listen to the stories of Gaza’s women to fully grasp the horrors Israel is inflicting on us

Olfat al-Kurd

I survived months of bombardment before escaping. The systematic dismantling of our home has harmed every aspect of women’s lives

Since Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, I have lost my father, my brother, his wife and their daughter. They are still buried under the rubble. My house, where we lived with my husband’s family, was destroyed by Israeli bombing. In 2024, after months of bombardments, flight and displacement, I managed to escape with my family to Egypt. I’ve been living here ever since, but the memories of life in Gaza are always with me. What happened to me reflects the reality that Palestinian women in Gaza continue to face during the genocide.

Since the start of the war, many women in Gaza have become sole providers. Countless numbers have been left with no protection or home, and many have lost children or their entire families. A recent UN report showed that Israel has killed more than 38,000 women and girls in Gaza during this war. A further 11,000 have sustained injuries causing lifelong disabilities.

I used to live in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood of Gaza City with my family of six. Life under Israeli occupation was defined by violence, fear, and constant uncertainty. Yet within this reality, we built a life of dignity and continuity, with moments of joy. Remaining steadfast in the face of relentless violence became our form of resistance.

For me, that resistance was working as a field researcher for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, documenting human-rights violations in Gaza long before the genocide... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/25/stories-gaza-women-horrors-israel

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"What they could not do in 1948, they are doing now...." From Nakba to genocide: A Gaza grandmother’s lifetime of loss and resilience. At 95, Fatema Obaid has survived two massive Israeli assaults, lost 70 family members and endured starvation and repeated forced flight - but still refuses to leave her homeland

Fatema Obaid, 95, says the current genocide in Gaza is worse than the 1948 Nakba (Hani Abu Rezeq/MEE)

By Maha Hussaini in Gaza City, occupied Palestine

Published date: 15 May 2026 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nakba-genocide-gaza-grandmothers-lifetime-loss-and-resilience

At 95, Fatema Obaid has endured daily Israeli bombardment, starvation and the loss of 70 family members.

Yet the Palestinian grandmother, who survived the 1948 Nakba, refused to leave Gaza City when ordered to do so by the Israeli military during the 2023 genocide. 

For her, fleeing again would mark the beginning of a “crueller Nakba” - one she refuses to relive.

“In the first Nakba, it is true that hundreds of thousands lost their land, homes and villages,” Obaid told Middle East Eye.

“But in this Nakba, we have lost an entire history,” she said from an unfinished apartment in western Gaza City, where she is displaced alongside her grandchildren.

“We lost entire families, and entire generations have been destroyed for decades to come. What they could not do in 1948, they are doing now.”

Originally from Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighbourhood, Obaid was temporarily displaced during the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist militias attacked Palestinian towns and villages across historic Palestine, forcibly expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to make way for the creation of Israel - an event many scholars describe as ethnic cleansing.

Obaid later returned to Shujaiya, an area that remained outside Israeli control after the 1949 armistice agreement, but lay close to the new de facto border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

More than 75 years later, she relived the same trauma she endured as a teenager - only this time with far greater brutality.

“There is no comparison between the first and the second Nakba,” she said.

New Nakba 

Like many Palestinians in Gaza during the Nakba, Obaid experienced both displacement and giving refuge.

She and her family were forced to flee their home for several months amid the violence and chaos that swept across Palestine in 1948.

At the same time, Gaza was inundated with Palestinians forcibly expelled from towns and villages that later became part of Israel.

'Nothing is more painful than being uprooted from your own land and knowing that, after all these years, you will die in displacement' 

- Fatema Obaid, Palestinian grandmother 

Families arrived with almost nothing after fleeing killings, bombardment and attacks by Zionist militias, believing they would return within days. Instead, Gaza became a place of permanent refuge, overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians uprooted during the Nakba.

Today, around 1.6 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in the enclave, making up roughly 73 percent of Gaza’s population.

Since October 2023, however, Obaid has been displaced more than 10 ten times after her home and entire neighbourhood were reduced to rubble and absorbed into Israel’s newly imposed no-go zone.

“I have lived in Shujaiya since I was born. Even after marrying my cousin, I moved only a few streets away,” she recalled, adding that they fled for a few months in 1948 but eventually returned.

“Only during this Nakba did we lose our homes, our neighbourhood and all of eastern Gaza,” she added.

“They bombed our house and killed more than 70 members of my family - my sons, grandchildren, nephews, their children and many others from our extended family.”

During the Nakba between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militias and later Israeli forces killed an estimated 13,000 to 15,000 Palestinians and permanently displaced around 750,000 people - roughly 75 percent of the Palestinian population at the time.

In the current genocide in Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 72,000 Palestinians in two years, while nearly two million residents have been displaced. Around 1.5 million remain uprooted despite the ceasefire agreement, most now living in makeshift tents.

Staying in Gaza

Shortly after Obaid was forced to flee her home for another part of Gaza City in October 2023, the Israeli military issued repeated mass expulsion orders instructing residents to move south.

As hundreds of thousands of residents initially refused to comply, Israel imposed what United Nations experts considered a systematic starvation that was “used as a savage weapon of war” to force Palestinians out.

For months that followed, residents were deprived of basic food items, including wheat flour, and struggled to find drinking water. Famine was officially declared in Gaza City in August 2025 by the UN-backed... READ MORE  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nakba-genocide-gaza-grandmothers-lifetime-loss-and-resilience

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“I never thought I’d go on TV and beg for children not to be intentionally starved and that would be controversial.” Ms Rachel

https://youtubekids.tv/videos/miss-rachel/page/2

 Rachel Accurso

Rachel is a passionate educator who creates research-based videos to help toddlers and their families learn, bond, and thrive. Her videos infuse songs, games and nursery rhymes with strategies from experts to help children reach important milestones in the crucial early years of learning. Rachel believes all children are capable, brilliant and important. She loves learning from them and being around their contagious joy and wonder. 

 Rachel has two master’s degrees in education. She has one in early childhood development and one in music education. She is an advocate for children’s rights and works to ensure that all children have access to high quality early childhood education. She is an ambassador for Save the Children and Room to Grow.

​Her sweet little boy inspired the show and continues to inspire her work every day! She is married to the amazing, Mr. Aron, AKA HERBIE!     https://www.msrachel.com/

 

Ms Rachel  https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search?q=Ms+Rachel

  

 

A Palestinian child in Gaza wearing a Ms Rachel shirt

 "I want my taxes to help children, not KILL them."  Ms Rachel 

"Over 35,000 tents were flooded with heavy rainwater. Over 288,000 families sleeping in torn tents. ~1.2m people are homeless. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, is an act of genocide." Mohamad Safa

Mohamad Safa

@mhdksafa

 

Executive Director. Diplomat rel.  @PVAenglish main representative at United Nations ECOSOC and accredited at United Nations Geneva Office.

Over 35,000 tents were flooded with heavy rainwater. 

Over 288,000 families sleeping in torn tents. ~1.2m people are homeless. 

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, is an act of genocide.  

 https://x.com/mhdksafa/status/1993607538365837541/photo/1

 

 Mohamad Safa

@mhdksafa

The Israeli genocide has NOT ended. 

 

Children face high levels of malnutrition and starvation. 

 

Sufficient food is not allowed to enter. Israel continues its killing, starvation and destruction. 

 

Israel is trying to fool the world with a fake ceasefire.  

 

https://x.com/mhdksafa/status/1993313701722833300/photo/1 

 

 

Mohamad Safa

 

@mhdksafa

 

When the UN tried to pass a resolution against torture, three countries voted against it:  The United States, Israel and Argentina. 

 

https://x.com/mhdksafa/status/1993375598719217874/photo/1 

 

 

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