Euroviews. 2023 has been a year of catastrophes for children worldwide

Hassan, 14, should be going to school, seeing friends and experiencing the typical highs and lows of adolescence. But when conflict broke out in Sudan earlier this year, his childhood was stolen from him. 

From the displacement shelter he now calls home, he described to us the nightmares he has because of the death and destruction he has witnessed: “I dream of the tall building that was destroyed, people cut into pieces, and this bomb that fell into a man, that shredded him completely.”

Hassan is one of the children our psychologists have been supporting in Sudan. They tell us of children’s distress: they are having nightmares, they are unable to sleep; wetting the bed. 

Hassan is just one of the 7,600 children forced to flee their homes daily since the war broke out in April.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, entire families are being killed, like the tragic case of my beloved colleague Sameh. A growing number of people, including children, are left with no surviving family members. 

Another colleague told me about a four-year-old girl who turned up at a checkpoint all alone trembling, unable to speak, with cold clammy skin — all signs of shock.

There is increasing violence in the West Bank too, where 69 children have been killed in just over two months. This has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the UN started recording casualties in 2005. 

Since 7 October, we have also seen an unprecedented increase in Israeli military detention of Palestinian children — 245 in just two months in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and reports are now emerging of more in Gaza. 

There have also been Israeli child hostages for whom we called to be released.

Next year marks 100 years since the League of Nations — predecessor to the