PHRC Updates
For 20 months,
Palestinian children in Gaza have been experiencing severe psychological trauma. Fear, anxiety, nightmares, and emotional numbness are only some of the reactions to the violence they are exposed to. Since Israel broke the fragile ceasefire agreement on March 18, it has escalated its bombardment campaign with ever more brutal massacres and violence directed at the people. It has been blocking all humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2.
As we are sending this newsletter, Israel has announced another ground invasion in the north and issued evacuation orders across the entire of Gaza. People are again fleeing their homes, not knowing where to go under intensifying bombardment, the presence of snipers and armed drones. Our team is affected by this new stage of the genocide which keeps claiming life after life, every day.
This is not a humanitarian crisis—it is the result of a sustained and deliberate system of genocidal violence that targets everyone, and doesn't spare the most vulnerable. An entire generation is being shaped by war, loss, and displacement. Children in Gaza are growing up without safety, without homes, without access to food, water, or education—and increasingly, without hope for a future.
We keep trying to provide children in Gaza with support, trauma relief and mental health care. We are adapting to the exacerbating and ongoing forced displacement, as the escalating dangerous situation has made it difficult to work from one location.
In Cairo, we have established a weekly trauma relief and creative arts center for displaced children and their families.
Project updates
Gaza, Palestine
Circumstances have been deteriorating by the day and our team is being displaced once again. But even before, since the break of the ceasefire in March, we have been struggling to reach our children as the situation was too dangerous to gather in a central place. Here’s a recap of our journey.
Emergency response: We are trying to assist as regularly as possible with emergency interventions. We distributed clean drinking water to 600 families in the northern part of Gaza. In winter, we collaborated with a local shop in Gaza and provided winter clothes for a group of children. At the same time, we keep providing families with cash assistance as prices for essentials are soaring.
Phase 1: Between 2023 and 2024, we engaged with a big group of children to provide a sense of ease and normalcy for as many as possible, intervening on a large scale.
Phase 2: From the beginning of this year, we started developing a more focused intervention model which aims to provide intensive, individualized support to a group of 50 children. The work currently focuses on creating a support system, addressing the impacts of trauma and promoting mental health through a comprehensive, child-centered approach that prioritizes the unique needs and development of each child.
Home visits : Part of the intervention is to visit children in their “homes”, or in the places they are taking shelter as ongoing forced displacement and the dangerous situation have made it difficult to work from one location. Through home visits, we continue supporting our focus group with trauma relief and mental health care.
Cairo, Egypt
More than 100,000 Palestinians have fled to Egypt before the Rafah crossing was destroyed and closed in May 2024. While in relative safety, on top of the burden of the ongoing genocide in their homeland, including social exclusion, loss of livelihoods and the absence of community, most Palestinians in Egypt have no residence permit, are confined in spaces that are not their own, and have to deal with being alien in a country that does not recognize them.
We started working with displaced children in Cairo earlier this year. Our pilot program consisted of six days of intensive intervention and activities with 45 children. We assembled a team mostly made up of Palestinian professionals and creative artists who have experience with youth development work and have also fled to Egypt.
The Cairo Children’s Hub: Our creative arts/trauma relief center for displaced children in Cairo is open. The center aims to allow the children and their families to reclaim a sense of routine, build community, and relieve mental strain.
We work with 60 children and their families, using a mixed approach of offering guided workshops in arts, theatre, music and movement, as well as time for open play.
Parents program: While the children are in their workshop, we work with their parents. Our weekly workshops aim to relieve pressures, reclaim community with other Palestinian families, and learn about subjects like mental health support and activity building for the children.
Training I: In April, we started a series of intensive training sessions for the team, which we also made available to the team in Gaza. We started off with an in-depth emergency pedagogical training which focused on dealing with children impacted by trauma through creative arts, rhythm and grounding exercises. One day of the training was dedicated to the parents and caretakers of the children.
Training II: The emergency pedagogical training was followed by a week of developing activities that involve practices like identity and memory preservation.
Voices from the ground
Fatima Al Jabari, PHRC Gaza Coordinator
“We are surrounded by danger from every direction. There is no safe place, no house, no street, not even a hospital. Every moment we hear the sound of planes over our heads, and missiles are merciless, descending suddenly, without warning. Every area is filled with fear, and every day we lose people around us. People are terrified, not knowing where to go.”
“Even children have started talking about death as if it were something normal. Imagine how much pain they are in, and how exhausted we are. Our psychological state is collapsing, and every minute we wonder who will be next. Evacuations have also become the biggest nightmare. Suddenly, leaflets are thrown down telling us to evacuate, or there are recorded calls from the army telling us to leave our homes because the area has become dangerous. You never know if you will be able to return home or not.
We carry what we can with our hands, moving from place to place, but we continue to live. Some people didn't get to leave, and their homes were bombed while they were inside. Every time we move, we feel like the previous escape was easier, but the truth is, you're just moving from one fear to another, even greater fear. Moving around the streets has become a life-threatening risk. If we have to go out to buy something or finish work, we're walking not knowing if we'll make it back home. Drones are hovering over every street, and any movement is truly dangerous. The shelters where people have taken refuge are being bombed. Even schools, churches, and mosques haven't been spared, and people are dying from being burnt in schools!
On top of that, famine is a reality, not an exaggeration. There's no food, no water, and no electricity. People stand in long lines in front of soup kitchens just to find one meal a day, and if they're lucky, they'll be able to get it. Sometimes they wait for hours, and in the end they might not get anything. Drinking water is almost non-existent, and the available quantity is small and not enough for people, and most of it is polluted. Many people have gotten sick from it, especially children. We live on a simple hope: to live for another day, to eat, and to drink clean water, and that is all we currently aspire to.”
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