Don't All Children's Lives Matter?

HJJ member Teresa Thornhill, a retired child protection lawyer, penned this article for the 26 February edition of Hastings Independent Press, questioning why we sell weapons to kill and maim children abroad.

Child gazes out at destruction left by the Israeli military in Jenin refugee camp, Gaza

In February, I participated in a town centre rally organised by the Hastings and Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It was in protest at the activities of General Dynamics, a company in our town which makes parts for weapons sold to the Israeli Defence Force. Many years ago, as a newly qualified barrister, I volunteered as a human rights researcher with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza – before choosing the specialism of child protection law. I have therefore followed the events of the last sixteen months closely.

As I stood beside a friend in the cold wind, I reflected on a curious and disturbing anomaly in our government’s attitude towards children. All children in England or Wales, regardless of their nationality or immigration status, are, in theory at least, shielded from harm by our child protection system. We all know the system is fallible but, in principle, every child has the legal right to protection. Whatever we think of the failings of some local authorities in carrying out their child protection duties, most of us agree that children have a right to safety which the law must protect.

But what about the rights of children outside the UK, whose very physical survival, in the case of Gaza, is threatened by our government’s policy on arms sales? Israel killed at least 17,492 children between 8 October 2023 and 3 February 2025 (Gaza Government Information Office, aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker). UN reports over the last 18 years show that no other conflicts killed a higher number of children in one year (oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-children-killed-gaza-israeli-military-any-other-recent-conflict).

For the last 16 months, while Palestinian children in Gaza were being killed and maimed in horrifying numbers by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), UK governments refused to impose a full arms embargo on Israel. When a ban on just 8% of UK arms sales was imposed in September 2024, despite banning the direct sale of parts for the F35 fighter jet to Israel, the government insisted on allowing their continuing sale into an international consortium. This in the full knowledge that those parts were likely to be sold on to the IDF. Crucially, the F35 has been used in some of the bombing raids which have killed women and children and left survivors with horrific injuries.

In 2024, the use of explosive weapons in Gaza condemned an average of 15 children a day, or 475 per month, to potentially lifelong disabilities, including severely injured limbs and hearing impairments (savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/explosive-weapons-left-15-children-a-day-in-gaza-with-potentiall). Many underwent amputations without anaesthetic since Israel’s destruction of most of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure has meant that adequate care and rehabilitation are not available. Some children, who should have been saved, bled to death or died subsequently due to the unavailability of health care. Other children who made it to a healthcare facility died there due to a lack of antibiotics and other vital medicines; their vulnerability was greatly increased by the serious malnutrition which has become widespread among Gaza’s children and which has resulted from Israel’s illegal policy of starvation of the population. The blocking of medical supplies by Israel is still causing child deaths, even six weeks after the ceasefire began.

That is the physical harm caused (partly) by the jets for which the UK continues to supply parts. What of the emotional harm, the trauma experienced by children who have witnessed the deaths of their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers? On 1 Jan 2025 the BBC reported that an estimated 17,000 children have been left unaccompanied or separated from the family members who would normally care for them (bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyxewylpz9o); some are too young even to know their family’s name. There is no treatment available to help these children deal with their trauma, which will have a devastating impact on their long-term mental health.

Neither is there help for the many Gazan women who have miscarried pregnancies as a result of malnutrition combined with acute war-induced stress. The miscarriage rate increased at least threefold in the first nine months of the war (ippf.org/media-center/press-release-gaza-nine-months-pregnant-women-carry-burden-conflict).

Having worked for thirty-something years as a child protection lawyer in the Family Court, I feel deeply ashamed of my country’s insistence on a policy which has contributed to the acute suffering of Palestinian children. A legal challenge to the UK’s refusal to ban the sale of F35 fighter jet parts into the international consortium is due to be heard in the High Court in May, because it is not at all clear that the refusal is in line with the law (as set out in the Arms Trade Treaty 2013 Articles 6 and 7 and the UK’s Strategic Export Licensing Criteria). Even if the government loses in court, it will be too late for the tens of thousands of Gazan children killed, injured, orphaned and traumatised by the British-assisted actions of the IDF.

I’m not making a point about the law. Rather, I’m asking, ‘What kind of a country are we if, while seeking to protect our own children, we’re willing to help inflict such horrific suffering on children living under military occupation in a foreign land?’

I’ve also often wondered during the last sixteen months whether anybody in government has stopped to consider the impact on our children and young people of witnessing the suffering of Gazan children on their smartphones. What does a ten- or twelve-year-old make of such images, especially given the lack of official condemnation of the perpetrators by people in power in the UK?

Time will tell what price the UK will have to pay for its complicity in genocide, in breach of its legal obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of 1949. In the meantime, the very least our government can do is to fund the transfer of Gaza’s badly wounded children to the UK for medical care and rehabilitation. To date, despite pressure from a group of 50 MPs and doctors keen to provide treatment, the government has not agreed to take a single injured Palestinian child (bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r279).

Teresa Thornhill’s book In Harm’s Way: the Memoir of a Child Protection Lawyer, is published in paperback by Harper Collins on 13.3.2025, price £10.99.