Gaza’s children face long road to healing
Al Jazeera
Experts decry psychological damage from lack of schooling coupled with bombings, hunger, sickness and bereavement.
Eight out of 10 schools in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed, the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) says, but it is the psychological damage of Israel’s war on the territory’s nearly 1.2 million children that has experts worried.
“To be able to learn, you need to be in a safe space. Most kids in Gaza at the moment have brains that are functioning under trauma,” said child psychiatrist Audrey McMahon of international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF).
Younger children could develop lifelong cognitive disabilities from malnutrition, while teenagers are likely to feel anger at the injustice they have suffered, she said.
“The challenges they will have to face are immense and will take a long time to heal.”
David Skinner of Save the Children, a United Kingdom-based charity, said rebuilding the “schools is massively complicated … but it’s straightforward compared to the education loss”.
