Child Rights

A key annual United States government report on global human rights abuses has drastically shifted focus, with references removed to abuses based on sexual orientation, and poor conditions downplayed in ally nations while taking aim at those who have clashed with President Donald Trump.

Released on Tuesday, the 2024 State Department Human Rights Report, was issued months late as Trump appointees altered an earlier draft dramatically to bring it in line with America First values, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The report introduced new categories such as “Life”, and “Liberty,” and “Security of the Person.”

The department referred to its new report as “streamlined” and focused on remaining “aligned to the administration’s executive orders”.

While the 2023 report contains a lengthy introduction with numerous appendices and citations, the newest report has a single introductory page that stresses a desire to “minimize the amount of statistical data in the report”. An NPR analysis found individual country reports are, on average, one-third the length of the previous year’s.

There is no mention of discrimination against women, members of the LGBTQ community, or on the basis of race in the latest report introduction.

Instead, the report sounds an alarm about the erosion of freedom of speech in Europe and ramped up criticism of Brazil and South Africa, both of which Washington has clashed with over a host of issues.

Any criticism of governments for their treatment of LGBTQ rights, which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appears to have been omitted.

The report’s section on Israel is much shorter than last year’s edition and contains no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in Gaza. Some 61,000 people have died, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as a result of Israel’s military operations in response to an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in October 2023.

While last year’s report underscored numerous acts of anti-Semitism in Hungary, noting that a local survey found half the population were “moderately or strongly anti-Semitic”, the new report says the close Trump ally has “made combating anti-Semitism a top priority, publicly emphasizing its welcoming and open environment for Jews”.

The report claims “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in El Salvador – where Trump has gained help from President Nayib Bukele, whose country is receiving $6m from the US to house migrant deportees in a high-security mega-prison.

Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement that the report “purposefully fail[ed]” to capture rights abuses in a number of countries.

This year’s Human Rights Report from the U.S. State Department reveals a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.

— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) August 12, 2025

This year’s Human Rights Report from the US Department of State shows a visible effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.

On Monday, rights group coalition the Council for Global Equality sued (PDF) the State Department to release report documents, alleging the department had potentially manipulated its latest human rights report.

For decades, the State Department’s congressionally mandated Human Rights Report has been used as a blueprint of reference for global rights advocacy.

This year’s report was prepared following a major revamp of the department, which included the firing of hundreds of people, many from the agency’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which takes the lead in writing the report.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in April, wrote an opinion piece that said the bureau had become a platform for “left-wing activists,” saying the Trump administration would reorient the bureau to focus on “Western values”.

Taking aim at Brazil and South Africa

In Brazil, where the Trump administration has clashed with the government, the State Department found the human rights situation had declined, after the 2023 report found no significant changes. This year’s report took aim at the courts, stating they took action undermining freedom of speech and disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, among others.

Bolsonaro is on trial before the Supreme Court on charges he conspired with allies to violently overturn his 2022 electoral loss to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Trump has referred to the case as a “witch hunt” and called it grounds for a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods.

In South Africa, whose government the Trump administration has accused of racial discrimination towards Afrikaners, this year’s report said the human rights situation significantly worsened. It stated that “South Africa took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country.”

In last year’s report, the State Department found no significant changes in the human rights situation in South Africa.

Trump, earlier this year, issued an executive order that called for the US to resettle Afrikaners, describing them as victims of “violence against racially disfavored landowners,” allegations that echoed far-right claims but which have been contested by South Africa’s government.

Investigators name senior figures among those responsible for alleged abuses at detention facilities.

United Nations investigators say they have gathered evidence of systematic torture in Myanmar’s detention facilities, identifying senior figures among those responsible.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), set up in 2018 to examine potential breaches of international law, said on Tuesday that detainees had endured beatings, electric shocks, strangulation and fingernail removal with pliers.

“We have uncovered significant evidence, including eyewitness testimony, showing systematic torture in Myanmar detention facilities,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the mechanism, said in a statement accompanying its 16-page report.

The UN team said some prisoners died as a result of the torture.

It also documented the abuse of children, often detained unlawfully as proxies for their missing parents.

According to the report, the UN team has made more than two dozen formal requests for information and access to the country, all of which have gone unanswered. Myanmar’s military authorities did not respond to media requests for comment.

The military has repeatedly denied committing atrocities, saying it is maintaining peace and security while blaming “terrorists” for unrest.

The findings cover a year that ended on June 30 and draw on information from more than 1,300 sources, including hundreds of witness accounts, forensic analysis, photographs and documents.

The IIMM said it identified high-ranking commanders among the perpetrators but declined to name them to avoid alerting those under investigation.

The report also found that both government forces and armed opposition groups had committed summary executions. Officials from neither side of Myanmar’s conflict were available to comment.

The latest turmoil in Myanmar began when a 2021 military coup ousted an elected civilian government, sparking a nationwide conflict. The UN estimates tens of thousands of people have been detained in efforts to crush dissent and bolster the military’s ranks.

Last month, the leader of the military government, Min Aung Hlaing, ended a four-year state of emergency and appointed himself acting president before planned elections.

The IIMM’s mandate covers abuses in Myanmar dating back to 2011, including the military’s 2017 campaign against the mostly Muslim Rohingya, which forced hundreds of thousands of members of the ethnic minority to flee to Bangladesh, and postcoup atrocities against multiple communities.

The IIMM is also assisting international legal proceedings, including cases in Britain. However, the report warned that budget cuts at the UN could undermine its work.

“These financial pressures threaten the Mechanism’s ability to sustain its critical work and to continue supporting international and national justice efforts,” it said.

Palestinians take Al Jazeera on journey showing how hard it is to get food at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution hubs. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 people at GHF sites since May. Observers say Israel’s aid management is cruel and farcical.

Palestinian mothers in the Gaza Strip are desperately trying to feed their newborns as Israel’s punishing blockade on the besieged enclave has led to dire shortages of infant formula, with some resorting to filling bottles with water and whatever food they can find.

Dr Kahlil Daqran told Al Jazeera on Thursday that as supplies of formula run out, many mothers are often too malnourished to breastfeed their infants.

“In the Gaza Strip, we have thousands of children being starved because there is no milk for children under the age of two,” Daqran said.

“These children, their mothers also have malnutrition because there is no food, so the mothers cannot produce milk. Now, our children are being fed either water or ground hard legumes, and this is harmful for children in Gaza.”

Azhar Imad, 31, said she has mixed tahini with water in hopes of feeding four-month-old Joury. But she said she fears the mixture will make her baby sick.

“I am using this paste instead of milk, but she won’t drink it. All these can cause illnesses,” Imad said. “Sometimes, I give her water in the bottle; there’s nothing available. I make her caraway and herbs, any kind of herbs.”

Israel’s blockade on Gaza, which has been under Israeli military bombardment since October 2023, has led to critical shortages of food, water, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.

Local hospitals said on Thursday that at least two more deaths from Israel’s forced starvation were reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of hunger-related fatalities since Israel’s war began to 159, including 90 children.

The United Nations has warned that Palestinian children are especially vulnerable as hunger grips the coastal territory, and UN officials have repeatedly called on Israel to allow an uninterrupted flow of aid supplies.

Israel has blamed the UN for the starvation crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip, saying the global body had failed to pick up supplies.

UN officials, and several nations, have rejected that claim as false and stressed that Israel has refused to offer safe routes for humanitarian agencies to transport aid into Gaza.

Airdrops of humanitarian supplies, carried out in recent days, have also done little to address the widespread hunger crisis. Experts denounced the effort as dangerous, costly and ineffective.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Thursday that the UN and its partners “continue to seize every opportunity to collect supplies from the Israeli-controlled crossings and replenish those platforms with new supplies”.

“Our colleagues say that, despite Israeli announcements regarding the designation of convoy routes as secure, trucks continue to face long delays that expose drivers, aid workers, and crowds to danger,” Haq said.

“The long waits are because a single route has been made available for our teams exiting Kerem Shalom [Karem Abu Salem crossing] inside Gaza, and Israeli ground forces have set up an ad hoc checkpoint on that route.”

As starvation continues to grip Gaza, more Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while seeking aid at distribution sites operated by the controversial Israeli- and United States-backed GHF.

A source at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital told Al Jazeera that at least 23 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at them on Thursday morning as they waited for aid near Netzarim junction in central Gaza.

The deadly incident came just hours before the White House announced that US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are expected to enter Gaza on Friday to inspect the aid distribution sites.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the US officials also would meet with Palestinians to “hear firsthand about this dire situation on the ground”.

Reporting from the Jordan capital, Amman, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh explained that the trip comes amid growing concern in Washington that US contractors may be found liable for the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians killed while trying to reach GHF sites since May.

“There is a lot of pressure and insistence in Israel that those sites must continue to operate even if Israel allows more aid into Gaza,” Odeh said.

“This organisation was set up to bypass the United Nations, and Israel is not ready to let it go despite the resistance from the international community to engage with it in any way because it is accused of violating humanitarian principles.”

Hamas said in a statement released via its Telegram channel late on Thursday that it is ready to “immediately” engage in negotiations to end the war in Gaza “once aid reaches those who deserve it and the humanitarian crisis and famine in Gaza are ended”.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, countless families continue to face a desperate search for food.

Nehma Hamouda said she has struggled to keep her three-month-old granddaughter, Muntaha, alive amid the shortage of infant formula.

Muntaha’s mother was shot by Israeli soldiers when she was pregnant. She gave birth to her daughter prematurely but died weeks later.

“I resort to tea for the girl,” said Hamouda, explaining that her granddaughter cannot process solid foods yet.

“She’s not eating, and there’s no sugar. Where can I get her sugar? I give her a bit [of anise], and she drinks a bit,” she said. “At times, when we get lentil soup from the soup kitchen, I strain the water, and I try to feed her. What can I do?”

At least 60,034 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the war on Gaza erupted in October 2023, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.

The grim milestone was reached on Tuesday, with medical sources telling Al Jazeera that at least 62 Palestinians, including 19 aid seekers, have been killed since dawn, despite “pauses” in fighting to deliver essential humanitarian aid.

Local accounts indicate that Israel used booby-trapped robots, as well as tanks and drones, in what residents describe as one of the bloodiest nights in recent weeks, said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

“This is a sign of a possible imminent Israeli ground manoeuvre, although Israel has not yet confirmed the objectives of the attack,” he said.

The latest attacks come as the “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding in Gaza, according to a new report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global hunger monitoring system.

“Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City,” it said in the report.

“Amid relentless conflict, mass displacement, severely restricted humanitarian access, and the collapse of essential services, including healthcare, the crisis has reached an alarming and deadly turning point,” the IPC document added.

Food consumption has sharply deteriorated, with one in three individuals going without food for days at a time, it said.

Malnutrition rose rapidly in the first half of July, with more than 20,000 children being admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July. More than 3,000 of them are severely malnourished.

The IPC alert comes against the backdrop of its latest analysis released in May, which projected that by September, the entire population of Gaza would face high levels of acute food shortages, with more than 500,000 people expected to be in a state of extreme food deprivation, starvation, and destitution, unless Israel lifts its blockade and stops its military campaign.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and humanitarian blockade, which it lifted partially in March, continues to plunge the Palestinian territory into an increasingly dire malnutrition crisis as at least 147 people, including 88 children, have died from malnutrition since the start of the war, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

Starvation is affecting all sectors of the population, with Sima Bahous, the executive director of UN Women, saying one million women and girls in Gaza face the “unthinkable choice” of starving or risking their lives while searching for food.

“This horror must end,” Bahous said in a social media post, calling for unhindered access of humanitarian aid into the Strip, the release of captives and a permanent ceasefire.

Babies particularly affected

Medical staff at Gaza’s hospitals are seeing babies severely malnourished “without muscles and fat tissue, just the skin over the bone”, the director of paediatrics and maternity at Nasser Hospital, Ahmed al-Farra, told Al Jazeera.

The long-term consequences of malnutrition for babies, infants and children are severe as they are still developing their central nervous system during the first three years of their lives, said al-Farra.

Babies who have been malnourished will not have the required folic acid, B1 complex and polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential for the composition of the central nervous system.

Al-Farrah said malnutrition can affect cognitive development in the future, make it hard for a child to read and write, and lead to depression and anxiety.

Tanya Haj Hassan, a doctor with the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), explains that serious health risks remain even after food becomes available again.

“The reality is the problem doesn’t end when the food arrives … malnutrition impacts all aspects of the body’s function,” Hassan told Al Jazeera.

“All of the cells in your body are altered by this. In the intestines, the cells die. That results in issues with absorption, with bacteria. Your pancreas struggles; absorbing fats is difficult.

“Your heart cells become weak and thinned. The connections are impacted, the heart rate slows. These children often die of heart failure, even when they’re being refed,” she added.

“They also have life-threatening shifts in salts; these can also lead to fatal heart rhythms. They’re more prone to sepsis and shock,” the doctor said, in reference to oral rehydration salt solutions, which are usually administered to people suffering from malnutrition.

“[Patients can face] low blood pressure, skin lesions, hypothermia, fluid overload, infection, vitamin deficiencies that can affect vision and bone.”

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are pleading for help as more people have starved to death under Israel’s unrelenting blockade of the coastal enclave.

The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday that local hospitals recorded nine new malnutrition deaths in the previous 24 hours.

That brings the total number of such deaths to 122 since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, including at least 83 children.

“We urgently demand an immediate end to the famine, the opening of all crossings, and the entry of infant formula now, along with 500 aid trucks and 50 fuel trucks daily,” the Health Ministry said.

“We hold the Israeli occupation, the US administration, and other states complicit in this genocide—such as the UK, Germany, and France—as well as the international community at large, fully responsible for this historic crime.”

Sources at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, told Al Jazeera early on Saturday that a six-month-old infant also succumbed to starvation-related medical complications.

Starvation deaths have steadily increased in Gaza this week as Israel continues to maintain a strict blockade on the territory, preventing a steady flow of food, water, medicine and other supplies from reaching Palestinians.

The United Nations has warned that children are especially vulnerable as the crisis worsens.

Noor al-Shana, an independent journalist in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, told Al Jazeera that extreme hunger is affecting all aspects of life in the Strip.

She said she now struggles to find enough for one meal per day, while four of her relatives were killed while seeking food at aid distribution points run by the notorious Israel- and United States-backed GHF.

“The world is just saying ‘Free Palestine’ … We don’t want words, we want solutions,” she said.

“Enough, we are tired,” al-Shana added, fighting back tears. “We are suffocating. We are dying here.”

‘Deliberate mass starvation’

Separately, sources at hospitals in Gaza told Al Jazeera that at least 38 people were killed by Israeli attacks across the enclave since the early hours of Friday morning.

Of that, at least six Palestinians were killed while trying to collect food at aid distribution sites.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), on Friday reiterated criticism of the GHF, calling it a “cruel” politically driven effort that “takes more lives than it saves”.

Lazzarini called for the UN agency’s aid stockpiles to be let into Gaza, warning that the enclave is suffering from “deliberate mass starvation”.

“Today, more children died, their bodies emaciated by hunger,” he said in a post on X. “The unfolding famine can only be reversed by a political will.”

The Israeli military has blamed international organisations for the crisis, claiming that aid trucks are inside Gaza but that the UN has refused to distribute the assistance.

UN officials have rejected that, saying repeatedly that they have not received the necessary approvals from the Israeli authorities to distribute the aid.

The UN and other humanitarian groups have also refused to work with the GHF aid distribution scheme, which they say does not adhere to humanitarian principles such as impartiality and independence.

As the crisis continues to spiral, United States President Donald Trump on Friday solely blamed Hamas for the apparent collapse of Gaza ceasefire talks, saying the group is going to be “hunted down”.

“Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

The US president’s comments came a day after his Middle East envoy said US negotiators had withdrawn from ceasefire talks in Qatar.

Hamas responded to the US’s announcement with surprise, saying on Thursday that it had submitted a positive and constructive response to the latest proposal it was offered.

Despite Hamas’s insistence that it is ready to work towards a deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel and the US are weighing ways to secure the release of captives in Gaza that do not depend on a negotiated agreement with the Palestinian group.

“Together with our US allies, we are now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home, end Hamas’s terror rule, and secure lasting peace for Israel and our region,” Netanyahu said.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 59,676 Palestinians and wounded 143,965 others. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks and more than 200 were taken captive.

Israeli forces killed at least 115 Palestinians across Gaza on Sunday, most as they waited for desperately needed food aid in one of the deadliest single incidents involving aid seekers since May.

Dozens more Palestinians have been wounded, according to health officials.

In northern Gaza, at least 67 people were killed near the Zikim crossing when an Israeli strike hit crowds gathering for aid. Another six people were killed near a separate distribution site in the south. The day before, 36 Palestinians were killed in similar circumstances.

The death toll brings the total number of people killed while trying to access food relief to more than 900 since May.

Ahmed Hassouna, who attempted to collect food from an aid site of the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), described the moment Israeli forces opened fire.

“There was a young man with me, and they started firing gas at us. They killed us with the gas. We barely made it out to catch a breath,” he told Al Jazeera.

Another man, Rizeq Betaar, carried a wounded elderly man away from the gunfire.

“We were the ones who carried him on the bicycle… There are no ambulances, no food, no life, no way to live any more. We’re barely hanging on. May God relieve us,” he said.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said a convoy of 25 trucks carrying aid came under gunfire shortly after entering Gaza.

“WFP reiterates that any violence involving civilians seeking humanitarian aid is completely unacceptable,” the agency said in a statement.

Israel’s military said its forces fired “warning shots” at what it called “an immediate threat”, but denied deliberately targeting aid convoys.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned on Sunday the situation in Gaza has reached “catastrophic” levels, with children “wasting away” and some dying before aid reaches them.

“People are risking their lives just to find food,” OCHA said, calling the conditions “unconscionable”.

The US-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also denounced Israel’s continuous attacks on aid seekers.

“The escalating massacres of starving Palestinian women, children and men murdered with US-supplied weapons and with the complicity of our government as they desperately search for food to feed their families is not only a human tragedy, it is also an indictment of a Western political order that has enabled this genocide through inaction and indifference,” said Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, in a statement.

“Western governments cannot claim ignorance. They are watching in real time as innocent civilians are intentionally starved, forcibly displaced, and slaughtered – and are choosing to do nothing. History will long remember the Western world’s indifference to the forced starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.”

Man-made starvation

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said staff in Gaza are sending desperate messages about the lack of food.

“All man-made, in total impunity. Food is available only a few kilometres away,” he wrote on X, adding that UNRWA has enough supplies at the border to feed Gaza for three months. But Israel has been blocking aid since March 2.

Dr Mohammed Abu Afash, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Gaza, told Al Jazeera women and children are collapsing from hunger.

“We are heading into the unknown. Malnutrition among children has reached its highest levels,” he said, warning of a looming disaster if aid is not allowed in immediately.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health echoed that warning, saying hundreds of Palestinians suffering from malnutrition and dehydration could soon die.

“We warn that hundreds of people whose bodies have wasted away are at risk of imminent death due to hunger,” a spokesperson said.

Palestinian families say basic staples such as flour are impossible to find. The ministry said at least 71 children have died of malnutrition since the war began in 2023, while 60,000 others show signs of severe undernourishment.

On Sunday alone, it reported 18 deaths linked to hunger.

Food prices have soared beyond the reach of most people in Gaza, where 2.3 million are struggling to survive under siege conditions implemented by Israel.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from central Gaza, said a 35-day-old baby in Gaza City and a four-month-old child in Deir el-Balah had died of malnutrition at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

“The mother was touching her body, saying, ‘I am sorry I could not feed you,’” Khoudary said.

“Parents go to the GHF distribution sites to risk getting killed or leave their children starving. We met a mother who is giving her children water just to fill their stomachs. She can’t afford flour – and when she could, she couldn’t find it.”

More forced evacuations

Meanwhile, more Palestinians are being forced to flee. After Israel dropped leaflets containing evacuation threats over neighbourhoods in Deir el-Balah, residents reported air attacks on three homes in the area, prompting families to leave with what little they could carry.

Israel’s military said it had not yet entered those districts but promised to continue targeting what it called “terrorist infrastructure”.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said: “We are face to face with another misleading evacuation order. People are told to move to al-Mawasi, a so-called safe zone, but since day one, Palestinians have been killed there.

“This is not a safe zone. There is no safe zone in a war zone. Palestinians know that walking into al-Mawasi is like walking into a death trap – they’ll be killed in days, hours, or even minutes.”

Team of forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts begins excavating to identify the remains of about 800 children.

Excavation has begun in Ireland at an unmarked mass burial site to identify the remains of about 800 infants and toddlers who died at a church-run home for unmarried mothers.

The digging of the site on Monday marked the beginning of a two-year investigation planned by Irish and foreign forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts in the western city of Tuam.

The probe comes more than a decade after Catherine Corless, an amateur historian, first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there, forcing the government to form a commission to investigate the matter.

The commission found that the remains of 802 children from newborns to three-year-olds were buried in Tuam from 1925 to 1961 as it discovered an “appalling” mortality rate of about 15 percent among children born at all of the so-called Mother and Baby Homes, which operated across Ireland.

Subsequent test excavations from 2016 and 2017 found significant quantities of baby remains in a disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex.

Ireland’s Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation with experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States.

It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible and reinterment of the remains found, Director Daniel MacSweeney said at a recent news conference in Tuam.

‘Denied dignity and respect’

“These children were denied every human right in their lifetime as were their mothers,” Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters this month, the AFP news agency reported.

“And they were denied dignity and respect in death.”

The Tuam home, run by nuns from the Bon Secours Order, was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a housing estate.

Significant quantities of human skeletal remains were found in chambers along with babies’ shoes and nappy pins underneath a patch of grass near a playground during the test excavations.

Corless found records that show as many as 796 babies and children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. State-issued death certificates compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the causes of death.

“It’s been a fierce battle. When I started this, nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs,” Corless, 71, told AFP in May. “I was just begging: Take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied.”

A six-year inquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide.

Catholic nuns ran the so-called mother and baby institution from 1925 to 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and were shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too, but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem.

The last time Marta saw her 14-year-old son was three months ago – he was wearing rebel army fatigues and holding a rifle as he marched down the street with the other child soldiers.

She ran to the commanding officer and begged him to release her boy, who had been abducted nine months earlier in the middle of the night from their home in eastern Colombia at age 13. The officer, part of a dissident group of the now-demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, waved her away, threatening to shoot her if she didn’t leave.

“All I do is pray and cry and cry and cry and ask God to get my boy out of there,” said Marta, who asked to remain anonymous in order to share her family’s experience safely.

The 40-year-old mother is not alone. Hundreds of mothers across Colombia have lost children to similar armed groups, either through abduction or coercion.

In its annual report for 2024, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that Colombia faces its worst humanitarian outlook since the 2016 peace deal with the FARC rebel group. It drew special attention to surging child recruitment by armed groups, finding that 58 percent of those living in conflict zones cited it as the top risk in their communities.

As Colombia’s long-running and complex conflicts continue to escalate, with multiple ceasefires and dialogues between the state and armed groups collapsing this year, criminal organisations increasingly rely on underage soldiers to bolster their ranks.

And there is little being done to stop them.

Marta said she is too afraid to report her son’s abduction to the authorities after the armed group made a clear threat when they took him: if she tells the police, they will execute her boy and then come for the rest of the family.

“I have to let him be. I tell myself he is in God’s hands, so as not to put my other children at risk … I have to leave everything in God’s hands,” Marta said. “I don’t sleep, I don’t eat. Sometimes I have no will to do anything, but I have three smaller children with me. And they need me, they need me.”

Gloria, a 52-year-old mother from eastern Colombia who also asked to remain anonymous, shared with Al Jazeera a similar story to Marta’s. In June, her 16-year-old son was taken in the middle of the night and forced to join another armed group.

“I’m desperate, I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Gloria found out about her son’s abduction after receiving a call from a distressed family member. They told her rebel fighters had forcibly entered the house where her son was staying and taken him away.

“They recruited him to fight, and the boy had never even touched a gun,” she said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, nothing. At home, we never had any sort of guns.”

Her family fled their rural hamlet in eastern Colombia earlier this year amid intense fighting between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the now-demobilised FARC.

But after arriving at a refugee shelter in the nearest city, they struggled to make ends meet.

Her son tried unsuccessfully to look for work in Bogota and, unable to join his mother at the shelter due to space, he returned to their family home.

“He had to go back [to our hometown], and there they took him by force,” Gloria said.

Unlike with Marta, Gloria’s son was returned home in late June following intense negotiation efforts by local community members and the ICRC.

From 2021 to 2024, officially documented child recruitments jumped by 1,000 percent, increasing from 37 to 409 – but the real number is likely much higher, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“We’re seeing a generation of children lost into these networks of criminality for whom they bear little importance,” Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Colombia analyst at ICG, told Al Jazeera.

She authored a recent report detailing the scourge of child recruitment in Colombia. It found that minors are often given the most basic training before being sent to the front lines, used as cannon fodder to shield higher ranks.

“The casualty rates of kids in combat over the last year have been extremely high,” said Dickinson.

It is difficult to estimate how many child soldiers are killed annually since monitoring groups do not distinguish between civilian and soldier deaths when it comes to children.

However, according to the 2024 UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict, at least 14 of the 262 children (176 boys and 86 girls) recruited in 2023 were killed, though rights workers said this number is much higher.

“The majority of those children remain associated (136), 112 were released or escaped, and 14 were killed. Some 38 children were used in combat roles,” according to the report, which noted that one child was recruited on two separate occasions by different armed groups.

The report said 186 children were recruited by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) dissident groups, 41 by the National Liberation Army (ELN), and 22 by the Gulf Clan (also known as Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia).

“According to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, 213 children formerly associated with armed groups entered its protection programme,” it said.

As a result, families who lose children to recruitment endure unbearable pain, fearing that their child may be dead or injured.

By force or coercion

While cases of forced recruitment are far too common, in most cases, minors “voluntarily” enlist to fight after being lured in with false promises, according to ICG’s Dickinson.

“We’re talking about armed and criminal groups winding a fantastical tale to these children that it sounds so much better than their normal life, that they leave of their own volition,” said Dickinson.

Groups use TikTok, WhatsApp and Facebook to sell a glamourised image of life in arms, according to Dickinson. Boys are targeted with videos showing flashy motorbikes, guns and money. The armed groups target young girls by luring them with promises of romance, empowerment, education and in some cases, even cosmetic surgery.

But children face a very different reality after enlisting and are used by senior-ranking members to do their dirty work. Seen as more pliable, minors are given tasks like dismembering bodies or patrolling remote jungle areas for days on end. Child sexual abuse is also rampant.

“All [child recruitment] is forced even if it wasn’t done using force, even if it wasn’t through coercion,” said Hilda Molano, coordinator at the Coalition Against the Involvement of Children and Young People in the Armed Conflict in Colombia (COALICO).

COALICO provides assistance to families and children affected by recruitment and helps compile official data on the phenomenon. Molano says the number of cases officially registered and verified is likely less than 10 percent of the reality.

She said child recruitment is at its worst level since 2009, when the decimated FARC rebels sought to recoup lost manpower.

“It is a cultural problem that transcends the boy and the girl of today,” Molano told Al Jazeera, citing historical cycles of conflict that have dogged Colombia for decades.

The COALICO coordinator described how violence has become normalised, and with it, the acceptance of illicit activities as a means of escaping poverty. Many of Colombia’s youth view joining an armed group as the only way to improve their quality of life and gain independence.

“Young people in Colombia have very few spaces where they feel like they have a voice, feel like they’re heard,” explained Dickinson.

With child recruitment rising, experts warn that stopping it is a mammoth task that would have to address poverty, armed conflict and cultural norms.

“We cannot save everyone. It’s a sad reality,” said Molano.

But that has not stopped her from fighting recruitment when she can; Molano believes that protecting children must start at the grassroots level.

“The solution lies in daily support, in the case-by-case, because otherwise, we don’t make a difference. In the masses we get lost,” explained Molano.

As with Marta, who still holds out hope that her son will return, hundreds of mothers across the country remain at the mercy of armed groups, praying to see their children healthy and living once again.

“I trust in God that he is alive. I also trust in [the group], that they will not harm him. You cannot imagine the agony that I have to live through,” said Marta.

When you live in war for so long, you have to take comfort in whatever little control you have over your decisions. My city in northwest Ukraine is now just 20km (12 miles) from the front line.

We all know that the front line has been getting closer in recent months. Every two or three days, there are reports that one village, another village and a third village have been occupied.

Cluster munitions have already directly hit the city centre. There are constant sirens, some lasting as long as two whole days. We have got so used to them that we don’t spend the whole time in basements because, over time, people’s minds adapt. We stay outside and continue to live, knowing we are risking our lives, knowing that this coffee might be the last one.

For many families in Sumy, like mine, the critical decision is whether to flee to a safer area. When this is your home, your roots, your loved ones, everything you’ve built – especially if family members aren’t planning to leave – it becomes a very complex decision. My daughter and I are staying put, though she has been sleeping in the hallway for the past few months, feeling safer there than in her bed next to the window. But with the school year now over, some families with the option are leaving the city – for a summer camp, a grandparents’ house – before reassessing the situation. Some have packed up and left for good.

I feel the children’s absence in the classes I facilitate through the local organisation League of Modern Women, supported by Save the Children. One day, a child is enjoying the lessons. The next day, they’re gone. These classes continue bringing joy to children – giving them some sense of normality, moments of joy and a glimpse of a real childhood. For children who have been limited to online learning for months, even years, it is the only opportunity they have to interact with others in person. And they are supporting one another, building resilience.

The classes for small children encourage them to draw, express emotions, feelings and dreams through art and painting. They also play team games and sports and learn mindfulness and breathing techniques to keep calm during crises. With teenagers, we ask them to work together to come up with project ideas to improve their community. For example, one girl wants to create a drama club, and a boy wants a library for Japanese manga comics. We teach them how to write a project proposal, create a budget and offer mentorship. It’s refreshing – and essential – for children to escape and expand their imaginations beyond the reality of war.

This is a reality that is eroding childhoods. The constant sirens have turned a decent night’s sleep – critical for children’s health and development – into a distant memory.

This is a reality that has separated children from their fathers. One girl in my class was in a bad mood for a long time. Finally, she said: “I want to see Dad. He is in military service.”

This is a reality that has kept children from socialising – something parents around the world will remember from the days of the COVID-19 pandemic. One boy, whose only interaction with other children for a long time was through a computer screen, started my classes struggling to communicate with others. Gradually, he has come out of his shell. Many children have had to say goodbye to friends on the move, time and again.

In one class, a boy and his friend had a ukulele and wanted to sing for everyone. We said, “Of course, go ahead!” These were fourth-graders – nine- and 10-year-olds. They stood up, started playing and singing, and their classmates turned off the lights and lit up their phone flashlights. They transformed our shelter classroom into a concert hall for five minutes. It was such a joy to see them enjoying life, even if just for a few moments in a city under attack.

For me, that makes my decision to stay in Sumy worthwhile. We cannot abandon the families and children here. Children need hope – and that is what our classes give. You could leave Sumy, and something could happen somewhere else. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a border city or the capital – moving in Ukraine is like playing the lottery. Safety is not guaranteed.

For those of us who have made the decision to stay, every day the significance of that choice becomes clearer. If we all left, there would be no Sumy – and no one left to protect.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Officials pledge to toughen laws after 26-year-old childcare worker charged with abusing eight children under his care.

Australia has announced plans to tighten oversight of childcare facilities after a man in Melbourne was charged with dozens of sexual offences against children in his care.

The moves come after police in the southern state of Victoria announced on Tuesday that they had charged a 26-year-old childcare worker with more than 70 child sex offences, including rape.

The man, identified as Joshua Dale Brown, is accused of abusing eight victims, aged between five months and two years, at a childcare centre in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Police have said they are also investigating evidence of abuse at a second childcare centre in the northwest of the city.

Authorities say the accused worked at 20 childcare facilities in total during an eight-year span that lasted until May.

Health authorities in Victoria have recommended that 1,200 children linked to facilities where the man worked be tested for infectious diseases as a precautionary measure.

On Wednesday, Australian Education Minister Jason Clare said he would press ahead with legislation to strip funding from childcare facilities that do not meet adequate safety standards and examine other potential measures, including strengthening background checks for those working with minors.

“Any Australian who heard the news from Victoria yesterday would be sickened by what they heard,” Clare said during a news conference in Sydney.

“And for every parent that is directly affected by this in Victoria, they would be frightened and they’d be angry.”

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said she would introduce a state register of childcare workers and ban personal devices at childcare centres from September.

Allan said her government would also commence an “urgent review” to examine options for improving safety in the sector, including potentially installing security cameras in childcare facilities.

“We will adopt every recommendation of the review and implement them as quickly as possible,” Allan said in a statement.

“Following yesterday, I know too many families are suffering unbearable pain and uncertainty. I cannot imagine what they are going through.”

The latest safety scare to engulf Australia’s childcare sector comes less than a year after a Queensland man pleaded guilty to sexually abusing dozens of girls at childcare centres in one of the worst paedophile cases in the country’s history.

Ashley Paul Griffith was sentenced to life in prison in November after admitting to more than 300 offences against 69 girls at daycare facilities in Brisbane and Italy.

Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip have killed dozens of Palestinians, including people seeking food at aid distribution hubs, as the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave deteriorates by the day.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera on Sunday that at least 72 people were killed since dawn in Israeli strikes targeting multiple locations across Gaza, including at least 47 in Gaza City and the north of the territory.

Al Jazeera’s Moath al-Kahlout, reporting from Gaza City, described “catastrophic” scenes at the al-Ahli Hospital in the northern city as dozens of wounded civilians sought help following Israeli strikes on the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods, as well as al-Zawiya market.

“There are too many wounded civilians here, including children. Many are lying on the ground because there are not enough beds or medical supplies to treat them. This facility is struggling to cope due to severe shortages,” he said.

“The Israeli military has dropped leaflets in eastern Gaza City, ordering civilians to move south. These leaflets are often followed by intense and repeated attacks, resulting in the large number of casualties we are witnessing now.”

The victims on Sunday also included at least five Palestinian aid seekers killed near food distribution centres run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) north of Rafah, according to medics.

Since the United States- and Israel-backed GHF took over limited aid deliveries in Gaza in late May amid a punishing Israeli blockade, Israeli soldiers have regularly shot at Palestinians near distribution centres, killing more than 580 people, and wounding more than 4,000, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.

A recent report by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they had received orders to fire at crowds of unarmed aid seekers to disperse them.

Geoffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer, told Al Jazeera that the killings going on around the GHF are “inexplicable”.

“What is absolutely astonishing to outsiders is that it is in the business of apparently providing aid where it is desperately needed, and those providing aid with you end up shooting dead hundreds of people,” said Nice, who also took part in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

‘Most vulnerable are dying’

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in the Strip is worsening, with babies and toddlers dying due to a lack of nutrients.

Christy Black, an Australian nurse volunteering in Gaza City, said the hospital she’s based in is short of medical supplies, including formula for pregnant women who require nasogastric feeding. That leaves many without the nutrients needed to lactate – as well as baby formula, she said.

“Our most vulnerable are dying,” Black told Al Jazeera. “We’ve seen a couple of babies die over the last couple of days in Gaza City. It’s really desperate here.”

Malnourishment also makes it difficult to heal from wounds, she said, adding that there is a significant uptick in respiratory illnesses due to the number of bombs being dropped on Gaza.

“We’re seeing children going through the rubbish trying to find something to eat … Children who might be nine or 10 years old that look like two-year-olds,” she added.

Ceasefire talks

With Israeli bombardment of the besieged enclave relentless, there are indications of a fresh impetus to end the war in the wake of the US and Israeli bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities and the ensuing ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump seemed determined to seal a truce. “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!” he said in a Social Truth post. His comments came after he said he believed a ceasefire could be reached within a week. “I think it’s close. I just spoke to some of the people involved,” Trump said on Saturday.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not comment on the push for a truce, he said in the past week that behind-the-scenes talks have been taking place to try and secure a 60-day pause in fighting.

Negotiations revolve around a proposal put forward by the US back in March to extend phase one of a ceasefire that Israel violated by resuming its bombing of Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said, “Netanyahu is under a lot of pressure as Trump has been quite outspoken for some time that he wants to see a ceasefire in Gaza.”

“And prior to Israel’s attacks on Iran, just about two weeks ago, there was a lot of pressure from European allies because of the Israeli military’s conduct in the Gaza Strip,” she said.

In the meantime, the Jerusalem District Court cancelled this week’s hearings in Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial, accepting a request that the Israeli leader made, citing classified diplomatic and security grounds.

It was unclear whether a social media post by Trump – one suggesting the trial could interfere with Netanyahu’s ability to join negotiations with Hamas and Iran – influenced the court’s decision.

The ruling, seen by Reuters, said that new reasons provided by Netanyahu, the head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad and the military intelligence chief justified cancelling the hearings.

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust – all of which he denies. He has cast the trial against him as an orchestrated left-wing witch-hunt meant to topple a democratically elected right-wing leader.

On Friday, the court rejected a request by Netanyahu to delay his testimony for the next two weeks because of diplomatic and security matters following the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, which ended last Tuesday.

He was due to take the stand on Monday for cross-examination.

“It is INSANITY doing what the out-of-control prosecutors are doing to Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. He said Washington, having given billions of dollars worth of aid to Israel, was not going to “stand for this”.

A spokesperson for the Israeli prosecution declined to comment on Trump’s post. Netanyahu reposted Trump’s comments on X and added: “Thank you again, @realDonaldTrump. Together, we will make the Middle East Great Again!”

Trump said Netanyahu was “right now” negotiating a deal with Hamas, though neither leader provided details, and though officials from both sides have voiced scepticism over prospects for a ceasefire soon.

A truck collided with a minibus carrying day labourers, two of whom were 14-year-old girls, to their workplace.

A truck has collided with a minibus carrying workers on a road in Egypt, killing 19 people, most of them teenage girls, according to local officials.

The collision occurred as the workers were heading to work in the early hours of Friday morning on a regional road in the city of Ashmoun in the Nile Delta province of Menoufia, north of the capital Cairo.

The truck collided with the minibus as it carried the labourers to their workplace from their home village of Kafr al-Sanabsa, according to the state-owned newspaper, Akhbar al-Youm.

Most of the workers were teenagers – two of them just 14 – according to a list of the names and ages published by the state-owned daily, Al-Ahram. Egyptian media has dubbed the crash victims “martyrs for their daily bread”.

Some 1.3 million minors are engaged in some form of child labour in Egypt, according to government figures, and accidents often involve underage labourers travelling to work in overcrowded minibuses in rural areas.

Only three people survived the crash on Friday, according to a statement from Egypt’s Ministry of Labour, and they were transferred to the General Ashmoun Hospital.

Egypt’s Labour Minister Mohamed Gebran has ordered authorities to compensate the families of the deceased with up to 200,000 Egyptian pounds (about $4,000) each. Each injured person will also receive 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($400).

Menoufia provincial governor, Ibrahim Abu Leimon, said the cause of the crash would be investigated. Preliminary reports suggest excessive speeding may have been a key factor.

Abu Leimon also called on the country’s Ministry of Transportation to reassess safety measures on the regional road. In April, five members of a single family died in a two-car collision on the same road.

Deadly traffic accidents claim thousands of lives every year across Egypt.

In October 2023, 35 people were killed, at least 18 of whom burned to death, in a “horrific collision” involving a bus and several cars on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road, according to Al-Ahram.

Granada, Spain – Sometimes there have been as few as two or three people, sometimes as many as 15.

But no matter the number, every morning for the past few weeks at the Jose Hurtado primary school in the Spanish city of Granada, a group of parents have dropped off their kids, then silently gathered nearby behind two simple but powerful pro-Gaza banners: “No more dead children” and “Against Genocide.”

“It started when a fictional video, set in 2040, came through one of our parents’ WhatsApp groups, about how Gaza was destroyed. And in it children ask their mums and dads – what did you do during the genocide?” Mar Domech, who helped the protest get started, told Al Jazeera.

“I began saying – instead of re-sending the video, let’s actually do something, a bit like during the pandemic when people used to applaud hospital staff at eight every night. And the 15 minutes before the kids went into class and the 15 minutes just after suited the majority of us parents the best.”

The protest format is simple. A single line of demonstrators hold up two long banners next to a tall school wall and make sure they keep out of the way of passers-by.

There is no shouting or chanting. But that these are clearly school parents caring about children dying – many of them of the ages of their own children – gives their show of support extra resonance. The school’s location on a busy arterial street near central Granada means their message reaches a wide audience.

“We don’t want to upset anybody, but we just can’t look away when so many children are dying and the laws need to be upheld,” said Domech. “What’s happening there is genocide and we have to oppose this, whoever the victims are.”

After almost two years of Israeli attacks, Gaza is home to the highest number of child amputees per capita. More than 17,000 children have been killed. And according to Save the Children, more than 930,000 children in Gaza – nearly every single child – are now at risk of famine.

The failure of more parents to join their show of solidarity is treated with a mixture of disappointment, resilience and not a little wry humour by the dozen or so “regulars”, like when they recall when two plainclothes police officers arrived to check their IDs.

It just so happened that day only two pro-Palestine parents were present, but, as Domech recalled with a laugh, thanks to the police turning up, it seemed like the number of protesters had abruptly doubled.

In any case, the limited response has done nothing to stop their determination to continue.

One woman passes by most days and stops to take a photo to send to a friend in Palestine. Some of the cars or tourists on buses going up to the nearby medieval Alhambra monument honk and wave in support.

The morale boosts are important, as well as the parents’ conviction that even this relatively tiny but tenacious protest matters.

“I couldn’t stand the idea of simply being an onlooker any more, what’s going on is so atrocious,” said Alberto, another parent. “I’m just pleased that we’ve kept going, too. I’m studying for civil service exams so time-wise I can be flexible, but it’s not straightforward to do this every day when you’re working or have other commitments. However, I think it’s fundamental we do it.”

Spain is among a small group of European nations that has consistently shown support for Palestine and criticised Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Together with Ireland and Norway, in May 2024, Spain recognised the Palestinian state and last year it expressed support for the genocide case against Israel submitted by South Africa in the International Court of Justice.

After the European Union’s latest report on Gaza was published this week,  Spain was the one country that called directly for suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, while its foreign minister demanded an arms embargo.

As for the Granada school gates protest, “We’ll go on with it once term restarts in September”, said Domech, “although hopefully that wouldn’t be necessary”.

Violence against children in conflict zones reached ‘unprecedented levels’ in 2024, with most violations committed in Gaza, occupied West Bank, UN says.

The United Nations has kept Israel on its “blacklist” of countries committing abuses against children in armed conflict for a second straight year, as its war on Gaza continues for nearly 20 months.

The listing on Thursday came as the UN said in a new report that violence against children in conflict zones reached “unprecedented levels” in 2024, with the highest number of violations committed in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank by the Israeli army.

The annual report on Children in Armed Conflict detailed “a staggering” 25 percent surge globally in grave violations against children below the age of 18 last year from 2023. It said it had verified 41,370 grave violations against children, including killing and maiming, sexual violence, and attacks on schools and hospitals.

Among them were 8,554 grave violations against 2,959 children – 2,944 Palestinian, 15 Israeli – in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.

The figure includes confirmation of 1,259 Palestinian children killed and 941 wounded in Gaza, which has come under relentless Israeli bombardment following an attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported much higher figures, and the UN said it is currently verifying information on an additional 4,470 children killed in 2024 in the besieged territory.

The UN said it has also verified the killing of 97 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, where a total of 3,688 violations were recorded.

The report also called out Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, where more than 500 children were killed or injured last year.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled by the intensity of grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel”, citing the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Guterres also reiterated his calls on Israel to abide by international law requiring special protections for children, protection for schools and hospitals, and compliance with the requirement that attacks distinguish between fighters and civilians and avoid excessive harm to innocent people.

There was no immediate comment by Israel’s UN mission.

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, and the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, were also included in the blacklist for a second time.

Following the Palestinian territory, the countries where the UN registered the most violence against children in 2024 were the Democratic Republic of the Congo (more than 4,000 grave violations); Somalia (more than 2,500); Nigeria (nearly 2,500); and Haiti (more than 2,200).

The sharpest percentage increase in the number of violations was recorded in Lebanon (545 percent), followed by Mozambique (525 percent), Haiti (490 percent), Ethiopia (235 percent), and Ukraine (105 percent), it added.

The British government has announced a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse following the release of a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey that criticised decades of institutional failure to protect children from so-called “grooming gangs”.

It marks a remarkable U-turn by the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which had resisted months of calls for an inquiry, stating that it was focusing on recommendations already made in an earlier seven-year probe.

But what exactly is the Casey Report, and what drove Labour’s abrupt change of course?

What is the Casey Report?

Commissioned earlier this year by Starmer, the Casey Report is a review of how United Kingdom institutions have tackled child sexual exploitation.

The review focused on “grooming gangs” – groups of men who targeted vulnerable girls for sexual abuse, often over extended periods of time.

What does the report say?

The report identified an institutional failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, exploitation and serious violence.

Among its recommendations, the Casey Report suggested a change in the law so adults in England and Wales face mandatory rape charges if they intentionally penetrate a child under age 16.

In her report, Casey concluded that too many grooming cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13- to 15-year-old is perceived to have been “in love with” or have “consented to” sex with the perpetrator.

Her review also highlighted reluctance by the authorities to “examine the ethnicity of the offenders”, saying it was not racist to do so.

In the local data that the audit examined from three police forces, they identified clear evidence of “over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men”.

However, the review also criticised the ongoing failure to collect ethnicity at a national level, with it not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, making it impossible “to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data”.

Were the recommendations accepted?

Yes.

The UK’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed the government would accept all 12 recommendations in the Casey Report.

This means the police will launch a new national criminal operation targeting grooming gangs, overseen by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

This operation would be overseen by an independent commission with powers to compel witnesses to provide evidence.

It would also go ahead with a national inquiry, with Starmer stating that he had read “every single word” of the report and would accept Casey’s recommendation for an investigation.

What led to Labour’s U-turn?

Richard Scorer, the head of Abuse Law and Public Inquiries at Slater and Gordon, a law firm, told Al Jazeera that the sheer size of the scandal and the fact that it had affected thousands of children made it “inevitable” that there would need to be a public inquiry about it at some point.

US billionaire Elon Musk’s online references to the grooming scandal that emerged a decade ago in several towns and cities in northern England had also pushed the “issue up the political agenda”, he said.

In June 2022, an independent review found that the police and local council had failed to prevent sexual exploitation of young girls by gangs in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester in England.

Two years later, political leaders in Oldham Council called for the government to investigate further, but then-Home Office Minister Jess Phillips rejected the council’s request, saying it should lead an investigation itself.

In January this year, Musk threw his weight behind far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson and had been outspoken on the issue.

He called for Robinson, a controversial political figure, then serving an 18-month jail term for contempt of court, to be freed, writing on his own social media platform X, “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?”

Musk also accused Starmer of failing to prosecute child rapists when he was director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013.

He also took aim at Minister for Safeguarding Jess Phillips, calling her “a rape genocide apologist”.

Starmer responded at the time, without mentioning Musk by name. “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves,” the PM said.

Will this report bring about change?

Experts say it’s certainly a positive step.

William Tantam, a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Bristol, who has worked on a previous independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said that from a researcher’s perspective, the main positive was that there would be more consistency and clarity in data.

He said that another positive is that inquiry panel will have the authority to compel agencies to participate.

Scorer noted that bringing in the NCA to investigate cases that haven’t progressed in the past is also a very welcome outcome of the report.

He said in the UK, different police forces have not always succeeded in coordinating their efforts to tackle grooming gangs, so a more centralised overview from the NCA might secure “a better coordination of police activity”.

Cooper told Parliament on Monday that more than 800 cases have now been identified for formal review, and she expects that figure to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks.

But Scorer warned that the government would need to assign an additional budget for the implementation of the changes recommended by Casey.

“If you are asking the NCA to reopen and investigate, potentially up to 1000 cases, that’s going to require a huge amount of resources,” he said. “Who’s going to pay for that? That’s one of the questions that the government is going to need to answer.”

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola says the images of children being killed during Israel’s war on Gaza are “painful” and have left him “deeply troubled”.

The Spanish manager of the English Premier League club urged the world to speak up instead of choosing to stay silent “in the face of injustice” as he addressed an audience after receiving an honorary degree at the University of Manchester on Monday.

“It’s so painful what we see in Gaza. It hurts all my body,” Guardiola said.

“Maybe we think that when we see four-year-old boys and girls being killed by bombs or being killed at a hospital, which is not a hospital any more, it’s not our business. Yeah, fine, it’s not our business. But be careful – the next four- or five-year-old kids will be ours.”

Mentioning his three children – Maria, Marius and Valentina – Guardiola said that every morning “since the nightmare started” in Gaza, whenever he sees his two daughters and son he is reminded of the children in Gaza, which leaves him feeling “so scared”.

About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are children.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 17,400 children, including 15,600 who have been identified, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Many more remain buried under the rubble and are presumed dead.

Many of the surviving children have endured the trauma of multiple wars, and all of them have spent their lives under an oppressive Israeli blockade.

Over the past 20 months, Israeli attacks have left their homes in ruins, destroyed their schools, and overwhelmed their healthcare facilities.

‘Deeply troubled’ by wars

During his emotional speech, which has been widely shared on social media, Guardiola said the world remains silent in the face of injustice.

“We feel safer [staying silent] than speaking up,” he added.

“Maybe this image feels far away from where we are living now, and you might ask what we can do,” he added.

He then went on to narrate the story of a bird trying to put out a fire in a forest by repeatedly carrying water in its beak.

“In a world that often tells us we are too small to make a difference, that story reminds me the power of one is not about the scale – it’s about choice, about showing up, about refusing to be silent or still when it matters the most.”

The former Barcelona coach and player said the images out of Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine left him “deeply troubled”.

Guardiola, who has formerly voiced his support for the independence of his native Catalonia, lashed out at world leaders for their inability to stop the wars.

“We see the horrors of thousands and thousands of innocent children, mothers and fathers.

“Entire families suffering, starving and being killed and yet we are surrounded by leaderships in many fields, not just politicians, who don’t consider the inequality and injustice.”

An independent United Nations commission report released on Tuesday accused Israel of committing the crime against humanity of “extermination” by attacking Palestinian civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites in Gaza.

“While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group,” the report said.

While the report focused on the impact on Gaza, the commission also reported significant consequences for the Palestinian education system in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as a result of ramped-up Israeli military activity, harassment of students and settler attacks.

“Children in Gaza have lost their childhood. With no education available, they are forced to worry about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, starvation and subhuman living conditions,” the report added.

“What is particularly disturbing is the widespread nature of the targeting of educational facilities, which has extended well beyond Gaza, impacting all Palestinian children.”

“It’s so painful, what we see in Gaza … And let me be clear, this is not about ideology.”

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola discusses his views on Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as how the images of children living through the war have affected him as a parent. pic.twitter.com/zwrlexAcxa

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 10, 2025

Japan has introduced new rules restricting how names are spelled and pronounced. The new regulations, announced last week, aim to quell a growing practice of Japanese parents giving their babies unconventional names, known as “kira kira”, or glittery, in kanji, one of Japan’s major writing systems.

But why are such names a problem for Japanese authorities? And do the new rules spell disaster for parents who want to break the mould and name their children Nike, the shoe brand, or Pikachu, the little lagomorphic animated character with lightning powers, which is part of the Japanese media franchise Pokemon?

What are kira kira names?

A kira kira name is a non-traditional name where the pronunciation is unusual or does not match the standard or phonetic pronunciation in kanji.

Japan primarily uses three systems of writing: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Kanji employs Chinese characters and is used in writing names. Parents in Japan can choose from among 2,999 kanji characters to name their child – out of these, 2,136 characters are commonly used. Hiragana and katakana can also be used.

Kira kira names, while relatively uncommon, started to grow in popularity in Japan in the 1980s, influenced by pop culture, brands and popular games like Pokemon or characters from the world of Tokyo-based animation house Studio Ghibli.

Parents pick what they want to call their child – say, Pikachu or the fictional character Hello Kitty. Then, they try to piece together kanji characters that sound like the name they picked.

But often, the kanji pronunciation is nowhere near what the name is supposed to sound like.

What’s the problem with kira kira names?

The names are spelled a certain way, but are meant to be pronounced very differently, making it difficult even for Japanese speakers to read the name correctly, causing confusion at places like hospitals and schools.

Take a name written like “今鹿” in kanji characters. Those letters suggest a pronunciation like “imashika”, typically a family name, said John Maher, a linguist at Temple University’s Japan campus who specialises in the sociolinguistics and languages of the country.

However, what the parents might have intended is the given name “Naushika,” inspired by the titular character of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1984 animated Studio Ghibli film, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

“A primary school teacher taking roll stares at the kanji of the little girl in the front row and scratches her head. ‘Huh? Naushika?! Are you kidding me?’ It’s the name of a Ghibli studio anime film,” Maher told Al Jazeera.

He cited another example — “七音,” which is pronounced as “nanane,” typically a given name. However, it is supposed to be pronounced like “doremi” – either a nod to the early 2000s anime, Ojamajo Doremi, or to a character in the manga series Doraemon.

“It’s causing a public fuss for one basic reason: frustration in everyday life. Schoolteachers cannot figure out how to pronounce their pupils’ names. Bosses cannot figure out their worker names,” said Maher.

Why do people use kira kira names?

The “glittery” names appear to represent an effort to subvert tradition.

A study using data from Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance from 1913 to 2015 revealed that variations in naming patterns were growing over the course of the century.

Still, “until the government’s National Institute for the Japanese Language conducts an objective study, we don’t have the numbers”, Maher said. The National Institute for the Japanese Language (NINJAL) is a Tokyo-based independent research institute for the Japanese language, established in 1948 with the purpose of researching the Japanese language and making recommendations about its correct usage.

Linguist and author Adam Aleksic said he believed the trend represented a pushback against tradition.

“There used to be traditional names and these names are a reaction against those cultural heirlooms,” Aleksic told Al Jazeera.

But he added that this phenomenon was not restricted to Japan. “There are pop culture names everywhere,” Aleksic said, citing the example of how many parents around the world named their children Katniss after the popularity of the dystopian book series, the Hunger Games, and the resulting films.

In Japan, he said, the rise in kira kira names might represent a cultural trend towards individuality, “probably because of Western influence, whereas historically, it [Japan] was more of a collectivist culture”.

What has the Japanese government done?

The recent law was an amendment to a family registry law originally passed on June 2, 2023, Jay Allen, a Tokyo-based journalist for a publication called Unseen Japan, told Al Jazeera.

The revised law, which came into effect on May 26, requires families to register furigana readings of names on the family register. A furigana reading is a smaller script comprising syllabaries in hiragana and katakana to indicate the phonetic reading of kanji names.

Previously, the furigana was not notarised on the family register. Allen explained that the change would allow authorities to check for any mismatches between spelling and pronunciation.

Now, Japanese authorities will mail notifications to households to confirm the phonetic readings of the names of the members. This will be done not only for newborns, but for every household member with existing registered names. While older people with kira kira names will not have to change names, experts said, this exercise would help the government know exactly how all names are supposed to be pronounced.

Those who want to correct the phonetic readings of their names will need to submit corrections within a year of receiving the notification. Parents of newborns may have to explain the pronunciation of their children, and local media have reported that they may be referred to legal bureaus.

The government has not directly banned kira kira names, but the new law seeks to restrict parents from using unorthodox pronunciations of kanji characters. “If they’re using kanji, which most Japanese parents do, then they have to show that the pronunciations they chose somehow relate to common pronunciations for those kanji.”

Allen explained that the new law rejects names that have no relationship to the kanji spelling; and names that are easy to mispronounce.

What’s next?

Aleksic said that he believes that the new law could lead to a decrease in non-standard pronunciations. However, he added that parents might find other ways to make their children’s names unique and interesting, “maybe [using] rare characters, maybe focusing more on katakana”.

“I strongly believe that the desire for individuality wins out in the end and these parents will find other ways to make their [children’s] names unique, and then that will still annoy the old guard.”

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a new prisoner swap and the return of thousands of war dead during direct talks in Istanbul although little headway was made towards ending the war.

The delegations met on Monday at the Ottoman-era Ciragan Palace in the Turkish city, and officials confirmed that both sides will exchange prisoners of war and the remains of 6,000 soldiers killed in combat.

Negotiators from both sides confirmed they had reached a deal to swap all severely wounded soldiers as well as all captured fighters under the age of 25.

“We agreed to exchange all-for-all seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war. The second category is young soldiers who are from 18 to 25 years old – all-for-all,” Ukraine’s lead negotiator and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told reporters in Istanbul.

Russia’s lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the swap would involve “at least 1,000” on each side – topping the 1,000-for-1,000 POW exchange agreed at talks last month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking from Vilnius, Lithuania, said the two parties “exchanged documents through the Turkish side” and Kyiv was preparing for the next group of captives to be released.

The Istanbul meeting marks the second direct dialogue in less than a month, but expectations were low. The talks on May 16 produced another major prisoner swap but failed to reach a ceasefire.

“The exchange of prisoners seems to be the diplomatic channel that actually works between Russia and Ukraine,” Al Jazeera correspondent Dmitry Medvedenko said, reporting from Istanbul.

“We’ve actually had exchanges of prisoners throughout this war, not in the numbers that have been happening as a result of these Istanbul talks,” Medvedenko added.

Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Kyiv also handed over a list of children it accuses Russia of abducting and demanded their return.

As for a truce, Russia and Ukraine remain sharply divided.

“The Russian side continued to reject the motion of an unconditional ceasefire,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the talks.

Russia said it had offered a limited pause in fighting.

“We have proposed a specific ceasefire for two to three days in certain areas of the front line,” Medinsky said, adding that this was needed to collect the bodies of dead soldiers from battlefields.

At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said.

Umerov told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said.

After the talks, Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested as a condition for a ceasefire that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured.

As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilisation efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions that were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities.

The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognise Russian as the country’s official language on par with Ukrainian.

Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow.

Ceasefire hopes remain elusive

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the talks “magnificent”.

“My greatest wish is to bring together Putin and Zelenskyy in Istanbul or Ankara and even add [United States President Donald] Trump along,” he said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who chaired the talks, said the world was watching closely. He acknowledged the two sides had discussed the conditions for a ceasefire but no tangible outcome was announced.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament, told Al Jazeera he was not very optimistic about the talks in Istanbul.

“Russia clearly shows that they don’t want to end the war because Ukraine proposed a 30-days ceasefire in March, and the American and Europe proposition was the same, but only one country [Russia] refused,” Goncharenko said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has ramped up its military efforts far beyond the front lines, claiming responsibility for drone attacks on Sunday that it said damaged or destroyed more than 40 Russian warplanes. The operation targeted airbases in three distant regions – the Arctic, Siberia and the Far East – thousands of kilometres from Ukraine.

“This brilliant operation will go down in history,” Zelenskyy said, calling the raids a turning point in Ukraine’s struggle.

Ukrainian officials said the attacks crippled nearly a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said the mission had taken more than a year to plan.

Zelenskyy said the setback for Russia’s military would increase pressure on Moscow to return to the negotiating table.

“Russia must feel the cost of its aggression. That is what will push it towards diplomacy,” he said during his visit to Lithuania, where he met leaders from NATO’s eastern flank and Nordic countries.

Ukraine’s air force, meanwhile, reported that Russia launched 472 drones on Sunday – the highest number since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022 – aiming to exhaust Ukrainian air defences. Most of those drones targeted civilian areas, it said.

On Monday, Russian forces bombarded southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing three people and injuring 19, including two children. Separately, five people were killed and nine injured in attacks near Zaporizhzhia in the neighbouring Zaporizhia region.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had intercepted 162 Ukrainian drones overnight across eight regions and Crimea while Ukraine said it shot down 52 of 80 drones launched by Russia.

Zelenskyy warned that if the Istanbul talks fail to deliver results, more sanctions against Russia will be necessary. “If there’s no breakthrough, then new, strong sanctions must follow – urgently,” he said.