In the ruins of Gaza, where childhood dreams are replaced by dust and hunger, the most basic needs—milk and diapers—have become luxuries out of reach. Since the tightening of the Israeli siege and the blocking of humanitarian aid on 2 March 2025, infants have found themselves on the frontline of starvation. The crisis has crossed every threshold of desperation: children now cry not only for safety, but for milk their parents cannot find and diapers they cannot afford.

UNICEF reports that infant formula stocks in Gaza can only serve 400 children for one month, while over 10,000 infants under six months desperately need nutritional support. Parents are left helpless. Assem Salah, sheltering with his family in Gaza City, puts it plainly: “This siege is killing us slowly—and it’s killing our children first.”

When a can of baby formula costs more than $22—if it can even be found—and a pack of diapers exceeds $27, desperation becomes the norm. Parents resort to grinding rice or biscuits into makeshift milk, reusing diapers, or going without entirely. These acts of survival often come with consequences: children suffer from rashes, infections, and increasing malnutrition.

With businesses destroyed, salaries frozen, and healthcare centres shut down, families have no options left. Over 21 nutrition centres have closed, while the threat of famine and disease among infants grows by the day. The cries of babies echo through overcrowded tents, where there is no milk, no medicine—only the unrelenting silence of international inaction.

The blockade has buried more than buildings—it has buried the right of a child to be fed, to be clean, to be safe. In Gaza, the siege is not just starving bodies—it is extinguishing childhood itself.