According to Iran Press News Agency in New York, Amir Saeed Iravani added at the Security Council meeting held on the topic of children and armed conflicts, "According to UN reports, since 2023, more than fifty thousand Palestinian children have been killed or injured by the Israeli regime."
The full text of the Iranian Permanent Representative’s speech is as follows:
I thank you for holding this important annual public meeting. I also thank the reporters for their contributions.
It must be said with great regret that international humanitarian law continues to be systematically and widely violated, and children continue to bear the brunt of wars that they neither initiated nor ever wanted.
Armed conflict endangers the lives and health of children, with wide-ranging short- and long-term impacts on their health, education, development, and future. Adherence to international humanitarian law is a core obligation that all must uphold to ensure effective protection for children.
According to UN reports, more than fifty thousand Palestinian children have been killed or injured by the Israeli regime since 2023.
The scale of the Israeli regime’s brutality is such that, due to the ongoing killing of children, a new term has been coined: “wounded child, no surviving family,” a term that refers to Palestinian parents who are killed while their children are injured but survive.
In addition to Israel’s deliberate attacks on children and vital civilian targets, including schools and hospitals, hundreds of thousands of children are deliberately denied access to food, water, medicine, and other basic services.
Many of these children are now victims of deliberate starvation as a tool of war by the Israeli regime, while also facing the risk of being targeted in the queues for humanitarian aid.
In recent weeks, the world has witnessed with sadness and anger the repetition of the same pattern and practice of the Israeli regime in the killing of children, this time in Iran.
In the course of its brutal aggression against my country, the regime has deliberately targeted civilians and killed dozens of children, including newborns and infants as young as two months old, since June 13.
The horrendous crimes and widespread and systematic attacks by the occupying regime in the region are increasing; this is an urgent warning to the international community and a clear indication of the grave dangers and threats that the Israeli regime poses to the lives, health, well-being, and security of children.
However, the regime will be held fully accountable for its crimes, especially its policies and practices targeting children.
Last week, the Israeli regime was once again placed on the UN Security Council’s blacklist of parties to armed conflict who commit gross violations against children.
While this is an initial and necessary step, it is by no means sufficient or proportionate to stop the regime’s policy of targeting children.
The supreme body must fulfill its responsibilities to save children’s lives without delay and take immediate and decisive action against the child-killing Israeli regime.
Although the United States has blocked all UN Security Council efforts to protect Palestinian children, it must not succumb to such hypocritical and double standards; all legal avenues must be pursued to protect the Palestinian people, especially their children.
I categorically reject the baseless, irrelevant, and fabricated allegations made yesterday in this Council by the representative of the child-killing Israeli regime against my country. The regime had no choice but to resort to lies and the dissemination of misleading information in front of this Council, but such accusations do not even deserve a response; the facts speak for themselves.
Zohre Khazaee
