60,000 orphans and counting: Inside Gaza’s shattered childhoods
▻https://www.newarab.com/features/60000-orphans-and-counting-inside-gazas-shattered-childhoods
In Gaza, orphanhood is no longer a private family tragedy unfolding one household at a time. It has become a mass condition of war.
Speaking to The New Arab, Director General of Taawon Dr Tareq Emtairah said the number of children orphaned by the war has reached close to 60,000 — around six percent of Gaza’s child population — a scale he described as unmatched by anything the Palestinian non-profit development organisation had seen in earlier assaults on the enclave.
The estimate is detailed in Taawon’s new report, Lighting the Path for Orphaned Children in Gaza – A Call to Action, which warns that the unprecedented number of children who have lost one or both parents will require sustained, long-term support extending far beyond the immediate humanitarian response.
“Orphan care is not new to Taawon,” Dr Tareq said. “We’ve been involved in this after every crisis that Gaza has gone through; Taawon has jumped in, but this war is entirely different. The scale of orphanhood is huge. We’re talking about close to 60,000 children.”
The percentage was alarming not only in itself, but because of the speed with which so many children had lost one or both parents “in a short period of time — probably the fastest growth ratio in the world.”
The death toll in Gaza since Israel began its genocidal assault in October 2023 has topped 73,250. Almost all of Gaza’s two million residents have been displaced multiple times and now live in makeshift camps and damaged buildings.
The numbers alone are staggering, but they only tell part of the story.
“A lot of the basic care infrastructure has been destroyed: schooling, healthcare, nurseries, all types of support infrastructure to us has been destroyed,” Dr Tareq explained, adding that repeated displacement had made the situation even more acute, with families moving “5, 6, 7, 8 times to different locations in Gaza.”
In that sense, orphanhood in Gaza often means losing not just a mother or father, but the wider structure of care that makes childhood possible.
It is also changing the shape of family life for those who remain. Many households, he said, have effectively become single-mother households overnight, with widowed mothers or female relatives trying to hold together families under bombardment, hunger and displacement.