‘I Just Want to Play Again’: A Gaza Child Speaks at 80th UN Summit
Written to give voice to the children of Gaza, this speech highlights the daily struggles, loss, and hopes of a generation living under siege
Written to give voice to the children of Gaza, this speech highlights the daily struggles, loss, and hopes of a generation living under siege. This is an address by a Child from Gaza to the UN General Assembly starting from 9th September 2025.
My fellow countrymen, those holding Palestinian passports cannot speak freely. They cannot travel to attend this summit. They cannot be heard.
I want to tell you this, hoping my words reach you, even though we haven’t been heard for so long.
Madam Chair, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Since you are a woman, you know how a mother feels when her children are bombed, injured, or die.
My name does not matter. The place I live in is enough for you to understand who I am, a child from Gaza.
A child, starved and displaced, running barefoot each day in search of food, water, and safety, not for a day, a week, or a month, but for the past two years.
I speak today because, as the poet RefaatAlareer wrote before being killed:
“If I must die, you must live… to tell my story.”
I am here to tell not just my story, but the story of thousands of children whose voices were silenced before they could even grow.
I have missed the simple things every child deserves.
I missed school, the sound of pencils scratching, the laughter in classrooms.
I missed playing with friends in the streets that no longer exist.
I missed hearing my mother’s lullabies and my father guiding me through homework.
I even miss being scolded for spending too much time on a phone instead of reading books.
Now, my reality is very different.
It is the stench of gunpowder and burnt flesh.
It is watching friends pulled lifeless from beneath the rubble.
It is running when food falls from the sky, only to discover that bombs and bullets fall with it too.
It is seeing the wide sea before me, yet not being able to drink even a handful of water.
Every morning in Gaza begins with the fear that today might be the last.
Every evening ends with the exhaustion of simply surviving one more day.
I want you to meet my friends.
Dana struggles with mental health. At night, she wakes up screaming from nightmares of explosions. Sometimes she sits silently for hours, staring at nothing. Dana is only 10, but her eyes look like those of someone who has seen too much pain.
Seven-year-old Jana Ayad, weigh just 9-kg, lies in a hospital bed, suffering from severe malnutrition. Her thin arms are covered with tubes, her lips too dry to whisper. She used to run faster than all of us, her laughter echoing through the alleys.
Now she cannot even stand. Her mother, Nasma Ayad, risks her life daily searching for food and water, returning exhausted but still trying to smile.
Samira, my closest friend, just sits quietly, clutching a broken doll pulled from the rubble. When I asked what she wanted most, she whispered, “I just want to play again.”
And then there was Hind. My six-year-old friend, Hind Rajab, cried for help from inside her car:
“I am so scared. Please call someone to come and take me… please come and take me.”
Her small voice trembled through the phone, even as bullets cut through the air. For three long hours she waited. By the time rescuers arrived, Hind was gone. Her screams echo in my ears every night.
In hospitals, children arrive with shrapnel lodged in their hearts and bullets piercing their brains. Pregnant women, their pelvises shattered, have their unborn children cut in two.
Children are operated on without sterility, electricity, or anesthetics, enduring the double agony of their wounds and treatment without relief. Surgeries take place on crowded, filthy floors.
Children do not die because their injuries are unsurvivable, but because we lack blood, antibiotics, and basic supplies that any hospital in the world would have.
Doctors are imprisoned. Journalists are silenced—sometimes with bullets, sometimes with bombs. Many UN staff have been killed trying to help us.
I am told that some of you may now recognize us and our country…
But I ask: where was I? Where were my family, my friends, my childhood?
Who were we, if no one saw us, no one heard us, while we lived among the rubble, hungry and afraid?
As the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote in “I Belong There”:
“I belong there. I have many memories.
I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell with a cold window.”
I have also seen the tears of UN and other workers. I see them sleep in their cars near crossings and cry as they hear our stories. But aid is not enough. Crossings open and close without warning. Tents fill sidewalks and ruins.
Even here, we try to create small oases of hope. Friends read any book they can find. Younger children draw on scraps of cardboard. But at four years old, all they know are the sounds of explosions. Childhood has been stolen before it even began.
Since the day they were born, more than 50,000 children have been killed or injured before age 15. More than 625,000 children in Gaza have lost their education. Schools are destroyed, classrooms turned into rubble. The future of an entire generation is being buried with them.
But we do not give up. As FadwaTouqan wrote in “The Deluge and the Tree”:
“A tree was weeping… and still it stood, green, proud, and full of life.”
Like that tree, we too stand. Broken, wounded, hungry, but alive.
Excellencies,
I do not come here to speak of politics, but of humanity.
We are not numbers. We are children. We deserve to dream, to learn, to live.
I ask you, leaders of the world:
Turn your resolutions into actions.
Turn your promises into protection.
Give us, the children of Gaza, the right to a future.
I want to end with the words of Mirza Ghalib, a great Indian poet:
“Hum ne maana ki tagaful na karoge lekin, Khaak ho jayenge hum, tum ko khabar hone tak.”
“I thought you would not ignore me… but I will turn to dust… before you even get to know.”
Thank you...
Note by the Author
The child from Gaza in this speech is fictional, but the experiences described reflect real events documented by credible sources. This speech seeks to give voice to the real suffering, resilience, and hopes of Gaza’s children through a representative perspective. References include:
- Malnutrition among children – Medics aim to screen thousands of Gaza children for malnutrition | Reuters (Janah Ayad)
- Mental health support for children – Gaza: More than 1,500 children reached by UNESCO’s mental health programs | UNESCO (Dana and Samira)
- Killed civilians and war crimes – Gaza: Killing of Hind Rajab and her family – a war crime too many, warn experts | OHCHR
- Hospital conditions – Reported by Dr. FerozeSidhwa, UN: YouTube
- Imprisonment and torture of doctors – Gazan doctor held in 'inhumane' conditions in Israeli jail | Sky News; Gaza hospital chief Abu Safia detained and tortured | Al Jazeera
- Targeting of journalists – Anas al-Sharif among four Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israel in Gaza | Al Jazeera
- Children killed or injured – More than 50,000 children killed or injured in Gaza | UNICEF
- Disruption of education – Education under attack in Gaza, with nearly 90% of school buildings damaged or destroyed | Save the Children
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