Children and Justice in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Commemorating World Children’s Day Inclusion, for Every Child (20 November 2025)

To mark the anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, this roundtable brings together academics with expertise in the Middle East, child protection, and child rights. Framed by this year’s theme, Inclusion, for Every Child, the panel will explore how justice, protection and inclusion can be meaningfully pursued for children living under prolonged occupation and genocidal violence.

Recent UN reports and statements have highlighted the catastrophic impact of Israel’s military campaign on children in Gaza. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has warned that famine has taken hold, essential services have collapsed, and children are enduring unimaginable suffering. A UN report further asserts that children are being deliberately targeted, with repeated attacks on schools, shelters and civilian infrastructure. These actions constitute grave violations of international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Children in Gaza are not only inheritors of trauma from previous generations but are living through active and continuous harm. Military assaults, starvation, displacement and the loss of safety and identity have left deep psychological, emotional and physical scars. Their trauma is both personal and political, embedded in the structures and histories that govern their lives. This roundtable will ask:  What does child-centric justice look like in the face of irreparable harm? How can we uphold the rights of children in Gaza, the oPt, and also in Israel, who continue to live with the consequences of violence, grief and displacement? How do we ensure inclusion when children are systematically excluded from safety, dignity and the right to thrive?

We will explore how trauma is transmitted across generations and compounded by genocidal violence, siege conditions, and systemic deprivation. Importantly, we will also reflect on how compassion and empathy — values central to child rights and humanitarian protection have been instrumentalised in this conflict. Appeals to empathy have been selectively applied, politicised and weaponised, often reinforcing narratives that obscure the suffering of Palestinian children or justify ongoing violence.  This raises urgent questions about legitimacy, moral framing and global accountability. Who has the authority to define what is right and wrong in times of war? Whose pain is recognised, whose rights are defended, and how do global institutions respond to children in conflict zones?

Panel

Lina Koleilat (Chair)
Lina is an Academic Fellow at the Australian National University. She is an ethnographer and historian who spent several years in South Korea. Lina completed her PhD in the College of Asia and the Pacific at ANU and was the recipient of the 2014 Prime Minister’s Australia-Asia Endeavour Award. She holds a Master’s degree in Korean Studies from Yonsei University in Seoul and a Master’s degree in International Relations from the National University of Singapore. Her teaching and research focus on religion, race, culture, social movements, and refugee studies.

Noam Peleg 
Noam Peleg is an Associate Professor and Director - Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales. Noam works in international children’s rights law, human rights law, childhood studies, and family law.  He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Children’s Rights and his is the Journal’s Book Review Editor. Noam was Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School and Leiden Law School, and held a visiting research position at the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town. He is a board member and a trainer at the Diplomacy Training Program (DTP), an NGO committed to advancing human rights and empowering civil society in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Cecilia Jacob
Cecilia is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School. Her work focuses on civilian protection, mass atrocity prevention, and international human protection norms. Cecilia’s books include a monograph: Child Security in Asia: The Impact of Armed Conflict in Cambodia and Myanmar, and two edited volumes: Civilian Protection in the Twenty-First Century: Governance and Responsibility in a Fragmented World and Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: A Future Agenda. She is currently completing a monograph on the international human protection order and accountability. From 2020-2024, Cecilia was an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow. Cecilia is co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Regional Grouping of GAAMAC (Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes). 

Jamal Nabulsi
Jamal is a diaspora Palestinian writer and researcher, living as a settler on Jagera and Turrbal land. A Research Fellow at Griffith University, he holds research grants from the Antipode Foundation and the Institute of Human Geography. He is a Founding Collective Member of the Institute for Collaborative Race Research, a Member of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and he sits on the Advisory Board of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. Jamal’s research has been awarded national and international prizes, including the 2023 British International Studies Association (BISA) Emotions Thesis Prize, the 2024 BISA Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Early Career Paper Prize, and the 2024 Institute of Australian Geographers Cultural Geography Early Career Paper Prize.

Bina D'Costa
Bina is a Professor at the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University, an ARC Future Fellow and a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW). She is also the current Chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. As a staff at UNICEF, Bina led research-led policy advocacy on migration and displacement at Office of Research-Innocenti in the Horn of Africa, Jordan, Lebanon, Europe, Myanmar and Bangladesh.  She has advised the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, OHCHR, International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh, and various civil society justice initiatives in Asia. Her current focus is on displaced children’s protection in global humanitarian emergencies including trafficking/smuggling, child/early marriage, child labour and gender justice issues. She has published many essays and seven books, including Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia and Children and the Politics of Violence. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award (Peace Studies), University of Notre Dame, United States and the Ann Tickner Award from the International Studies Association. Bina lives and works on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people.

The session will foster a compassionate, critical and interdisciplinary dialogue, contributing meaningfully to broader conversations on trauma, accountability and justice. 

 

This Roundtable is supported by Bina D’Costa’s Australian Research Council (ARC) Project on Children's Displacement and Humanitarian Protection in the Global South (Future Fellowship #FT210100759). The work also intersects with the research stream on Migration and Trafficking at the Centre of Excellence on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW #CE230100004), where a focus on the different contexts in which violence occurs is being examined. The views expressed do not represent the views of the Australian Government, The Australian National University, or any other institution.


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