UNICEF’s “The Gaza We Want” initiative, presented in Geneva on 24 February 2026, has collected the voices of over 11,000 children aged five to 18 across Gaza, who used drawings, poetry, and rubble‑made models to insist on the basics of childhood: shelter, secure schools, functioning hospitals, psychosocial care, and spaces to play.

The clarity of children’s priorities, sleeping through the night, walking to school without fear, should reshape reconstruction and protection plans, UNICEF says.

Humanitarian operators continue emergency relief, with hot meals, digital cash transfers, and stepped‑up water trucking after leaks caused a shutdown of a key line two weeks earlier, while partners race to rehabilitate pumping stations to prevent waterborne disease (OCHA update, 24/02/2026).

But service shortfalls remain stark: medicine and laboratory supplies, notably for cancer and cardiovascular care, are critically low. UNICEF’s Jonathan Crickx urged that child participation be central to any credible rebuilding, arguing that recovery that ignores children is doomed to fail.

Policy implications are straightforward: reconstruction must prioritise durable shelter, child‑sensitive schooling, mental‑health provision, and restoration of health systems, funded and protected from political interference. Listening to the young is not sentimentalism; it is a practical blueprint for a humane, rights‑centred recovery .

 Sources: UNICEF, Geneva briefing, 24 February 2026; OCHA operational updates, February 2026.