His ribs press against his fragile skin. His eyes, hollow and haunting, seem to beg a question no one dares answer: Where is the world? Yazan, a child from Gaza, is not dying in silence, he is being seen, filmed, spoken of, and yet, nothing changes. His small frame is fighting a war far more cruel than bombs: hunger, neglect, and abandonment.

Yazan is not a statistic. He is a boy who once smiled, now too weak to speak, to eat, to even be held. His aunt-in-law, Rawaa Abu Foul, describes a life stripped of every basic human need. “There is no food, no water, no clothes,” she told Snd News Agency. “No hospital would admit him. He is collapsing in front of us.”

The absence of care is not accidental, it is a consequence of siege. Rawaa’s voice, heavy with despair, pleads for the most basic things: a sip of water, a handful of flour, a doctor who listens. “If we don’t help him, we’ll lose him,” she says. And Yazan is not alone, he is one of hundreds of thousands of children surviving on hope alone in Gaza.

Since October 2023, more than 18,000 children have been killed by Israeli forces, according to Palestinian officials. Thousands more suffer in silence, growing up in ruins, if they grow up at all. The United Nations continues to list Israel among the parties responsible for grave violations against children, bombing schools and hospitals, maiming and killing with impunity.

UNICEF has warned that the rights of Gaza’s children are being shredded daily. But warnings have not stopped the war. Nor have they brought food to Yazan’s home.

The question remains unanswered: how many more children must waste away before the world decides their lives are worth saving?