As Israel’s war on Gaza stretches into its nineteenth month, even the Strip’s most vulnerable—newborns—are no longer spared. Gaza’s few remaining paediatric and neonatal hospitals are collapsing under the weight of a deepening humanitarian catastrophe, starved of medical supplies, electricity, and basic resources. The cries of infants echo through wards running on near-empty generators, with no certainty of survival.

UNICEF has raised the alarm once again. In a statement on Saturday, the organisation warned that the lives of Gaza’s children now hang on the reinstatement of a ceasefire and the immediate, unhindered entry of humanitarian aid. The consequences of inaction are stark: widespread malnutrition, rampant disease, and a rising child mortality rate. Thousands of aid parcels remain trapped at the border while infants starve and mothers mourn.

With 15% of malnutrition treatment centres closed since mid-March due to bombings or forced evacuations, access to care is vanishing. There is only enough baby formula left to feed 400 infants for a single month—a number that barely scratches the surface of Gaza’s desperate need.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has confirmed what Palestinians already know: this current phase of the siege is even more brutal than the initial weeks after 7 October. The suffering has intensified, yet the world’s response has only grown quieter.

Gaza’s newborns are not casualties of war; they are victims of a system that refuses to act. They are dying not from illness, but from indifference.