Decolonising international child protection in the polycrisis: Understanding displaced Gazan adolescents' experiences of surviving systemic violence

Since October 2023, international human rights experts have documented evidence indicating that Gaza's civilian population is experiencing "genocidal" violence by the Israeli State (Albanese, 2024a and 2024b; Amnesty International, 2024). Simultaneously, Gaza faces "ecocide," defined as the deliberate, systemic destruction tied to Israel's alleged environmental warfare tactics (Al Mezan, 2024; Molavi, 2024). These forms of violence have had catastrophic consequences for children, with over 14,000 Gazan children killed, tens of thousands missing, and nearly one million displaced with limited access to basic needs. The scale and severity of genocide and ecocide as forms of systemic violence challenge conventional international child protection frameworks, which primarily focus on interpersonal violence like abuse and neglect. This research examines how Gazan children and adolescents perceive these systemic acts of violence and considers the implications for their views on the future. It also explores how these insights can reshape debates on decolonizing the international child protection sector.

Critiques of the international child protection framework increasingly highlight its inadequacy in addressing the systemic violence inflicted on Gazan children (Blume Oeur and Varga, 2024; Hart, 2024). These echo broader calls in childhood studies to decolonize child protection by dismantling systems of oppression, epistemic violence, and the "white savior" mentality pervasive in humanitarianism (Abebe et al., 2022; Cheney, 2019). Dominant child protection paradigms often rely on liberal, individualistic frameworks that fail to account for the structural factors shaping children's experiences of violence and agency (Abebe, 2019; Spyrou, 2019). Existing research by international agencies focuses primarily on the mental health impacts of violence (Save the Children, 2024; War Child, 2024), neglecting critical, decolonial analyses of how these organizations may perpetuate...