Hope Starved, Childhood Stolen, Peace Denied

Every morning when I open the newspaper, I pray for a truce between Israel and Gaza. But every day I just get to see some images of acutely malnourished children and read how people are dying of starvation. A recent headline reading “21 children died of starvation in 72 hours in Gaza…..” didn’t just crumble my heart but also my conscience. It took me back to the stories and narratives published in various studies and reports by UNICEF, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, etc. One of the reports quoted a 7-year-old, “I wish at least tomorrow I get something to eat, I fear I will also die like my younger brother….” The worry and weakness that conflict sets in the lives of children allowing their childhood to slip away to hunger, anxiety, and depression is just too bothering to me.

When laws and policies across the globe proclaim that it is the right of every child to have access to clean drinking water, food and nutrition, basic healthcare, quality education… these are not mere words stated on paper or mere services thought to be provided to children because we can provide them. These are rights because these are the basic necessities that a child imperatively needs to grow up into a healthy individual. Lack of food, clean water, and basic medicines hurts the children in the environment first. The childhoods in these environments shrink. Childhoods across the world currently torn in war are literally shrinking. Stunted growth, weakened bodies, and a higher risk of infections seem to have become the norm. WHO in a recent report stated that one in five children under age 5 in Gaza City is now acutely malnourished…… The same reports read:

Of 74 malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 occurred in July — including 24 children under five, a child over five, and 38 adults. Most of these people were declared dead on arrival at health facilities or died shortly after, their bodies showing clear signs of severe wasting.

Malnutrition-related deaths are not easy deaths; these children are subjected to long, painful days before they finally surrender to death. Each day spent hungry in a stressful situation subjects their brains and emotions to severe, irreversible trauma. Hunger interferes with concentration and memory in children, weakening connections in their brain and hampering their IQs. Their empty stomachs are signs of invisible wounds of anxiety, fear, and sadness. The constant worry about the next meal, no meal for survival, withdraws them from their social environment, making them irritable, tired, and sad. The stress that sits in them deep wins the battles, and we lose our future generation to the sense of hopelessness; we lose them to depressions for their lifetime. These children fall behind even before they get a chance to dream, to live. The hunger, which is initially attempted to be quenched with water, slowly becomes tough and gets unbearable before the child finally loses the battle.

Image credits: WHO (https://www.who.int/news/item/27-07-2025-malnutrition-rates-reach-alarming-levels-in-gaza--who-warns)

Image credits: UNICEF

To many of us, the pain and tyranny of children in Gaza can seem to be a faraway crisis. But is hunger and malnutrition really that far away from us? Recent data from the national Poshan Tracker programme reveals that out of 88 million children between 0–6 years, 37.75% are stunted, 17.19% are underweight, and about 5% are wasted. Moreover, I believe hunger and malnutrition in any corner of the world strip away the basic values of empathy, justice, and humanity that connect us all. A child suffering in any part of the world does not weaken only that child or his/her primary family; it weakens the whole society, which includes you and me. Neglecting even one child’s needs is not just a loss for that child; it is a loss for our shared humanity.

But here, I don’t want to reduce the whole idea of this blog to just hunger and malnutrition in India. It is a global concern which is getting further aggravated just because some adults across the world are not in consensus with each other and they have chosen violence over tolerance. I wonder why individual and cultural differences affect us so much that we fall back to violence, but what makes us so tolerant to this situation of children that we let the borders and politics silence their cries? What happens to our collective values when we allow childhood itself to become collateral in conflict? Can we refuse to turn away and think how we can use our voice, platforms and resources? Can we not just simply fail our children and collectively respond to their echoing cries for care and justice?

In search of Hope

Garima