NEWS
A UN commission of inquiry finds the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children
June 2026
The fact
On 23 June 2026 the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published the report “The essence of childhood has been destroyed” (A/HRC/62/CRP.2). The Commission concludes that there are reasonable grounds to find that Israel continues to deliberately target Palestinian children, amounting to genocide and other atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank. According to the report, between 7 October 2023 and 7 October 2025 at least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 injured — about 30% of the victims — and the killings continued even after the October 2025 ceasefire. The document also records detention, torture and sexual violence against minors, attacks on neonatal and maternity care, starvation imposed through siege, and the destruction of schools and orphanages. The picture must be read alongside the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 (1,200 dead, about 250 hostages) and the war’s overall toll of more than 72,000 Palestinians killed. Israel rejected the report: its mission in Geneva called it a “defamatory sham”, stating that it strives to minimise harm to children, firmly rejecting the charge of deliberate targeting and accusing the Commission of ignoring Hamas’s tactics.
Legal commentary
The Commission is a fact-finding body of the UN Human Rights Council, established in 2021 (res. S-30/1): it is not a court and works to the “reasonable grounds” standard. Back in September 2025 it had already concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, identifying four of the five acts prohibited by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The instruments invoked are the Genocide Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute and the UN Charter, together with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The judicial track remains distinct: the genocide case South Africa v. Israel is pending before the International Court of Justice — which in July 2024 already declared Israel’s presence in the occupied territories unlawful — while an investigation is open at the International Criminal Court. A commission’s finding is not a judgment: it signals responsibility, it does not adjudicate it.
Implications
The Commission addressed recommendations not only to Israel but to all Member States: ensure accountability, halt arms transfers, consider targeted sanctions. This is where the coherence of the law is measured. The same States able to deploy swift and severe instruments in the face of other aggressions are called to apply the same peremptory norms here too. Israel did not cooperate with the Commission, leaving thirteen requests for information and access unanswered since 2023. The gap between what the law provides on paper and what is actually enforced is precisely what this platform documents: the law applies to everyone, or it applies to no one.
Sources: OHCHR (report) · Al Jazeera · Haaretz · UN News