Sally is an 11-year-old Palestinian child who currently lives in a shelter run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the Beach Camp in Gaza City. Sally and her family have not left the northern Gaza Strip at any point during the war. She had to endure unimaginable suffering that no child should ever be exposed to: the horror of bombs, loss, injury, forced displacement, destruction of education, lack of medical care, and trauma.
Yet, for a fleeting moment, laughter breaks through.
Providing psychological support and recreational services to children
In what was once a school, the shelter's psychosocial support counsellor gathers the children to engage them in recreational activities that might distract them from the miserable, surreal reality surrounding them. Sally and her friends are playing, dancing, giggling, clapping: just being children for a brief moment in a shelter where every centimetre reminds them of their stolen lives.
The European Union has supported the emergency humanitarian work of UNRWA in Gaza and in the West Bank providing them with €72.4 million since 2023.
‘I love dabke dance. I want to show you my dabke dance.’
The music plays, and Sally starts dancing. As she leaps into the traditional Palestinian dance, her small feet move with practiced elegance, her arms swaying as if, for these few moments, she forgets that she is a child of war and remembers what it means to be a child.
‘I love taking part in these recreational activities because they help me have fun and laugh a lot with the other children’, says Sally.
As Sally dances the ‘dabke', Suhaib, a 9-year-old, springs around, buzzing with positive energy everywhere, small in size but full of spirit. He tries to help the facilitator, not out of duty but to make the other children laugh.
‘I want to be a clown. I love making children laugh’, Suhaib tells us with a smile.
Since the war started, Suhaib hasn’t set foot in a proper classroom. He didn’t just lose his home in the bombing, but also his grandmother, grandfather, and uncles.
With EU funding, UNRWA provides psychological support and recreational services for children in shelters to help alleviate their suffering amidst the ongoing war across the Gaza Strip.
Since the onset of the war, around 730,000 displaced Palestinians in UNRWA shelters, including 520,000 children, have benefited from psychological support sessions and activities.
