Aneeza Pervez on moral failure and the lives of Palestinian children.
25 July 2025
For the past seven years, my research has focused on how children learn to care for others, build friendships, and make sense of fairness in school. I've spent hours listening to children talk about what it means to help someone, what kindness feels like, and why it matters to include others. In classrooms across the UK, I've seen how belonging is fostered through ordinary acts of noticing, sharing, apologising, and defending peers. These are the spaces where childhood is meant to be protected.
As the war in Gaza unfolds, that belief becomes harder to hold. The same children I study in one part of the world, navigating friendship groups and classroom rules, are, in another, being pulled from the rubble. School buildings have become mass graves. Homes, hospitals, and playgrounds have been flattened. Gaza's children are not being protected. They are facing 'unimaginable horrors' (UNICEF, 2025; WHO, 2024).
This contrast is not only unbearable, but also professionally and ethically indefensible. Safeguarding is central to both psychology and education (British Psychological Society [BPS], 2018; United Nations, 1989). But what happens when our institutions fall silent in the face of mass child death? What does it reveal about whose lives are valued, whose grief is legitimised, and whose suffering is too politically inconvenient to name?
This article is not only about Gaza. It is about us. I ask what it means for psychologists to claim a commitment to children's welfare while avoiding the realities of a crisis that has already killed or injured more than 50,000 children. If safeguarding is more than a slogan, we must act like it. The loss of childhood in Gaza is not just a humanitarian tragedy. It is a test of our professional integrity.
Who counts as a child? The ethics of selective empathy
The idea that childhood is a protected and universal category underpins much of psychological theory, safeguarding practice, and international law. Yet the destruction in Gaza reveals just how conditional that notion can be. Over 14,000 Palestinian children have been killed in less than a year, many in their homes, schools, or hospital beds (UNICEF, 2025). Some died clutching siblings. Others were found buried beneath collapsed buildings. Thousands have been orphaned or wounded with no surviving relatives. So common is this reality that medical teams in Gaza have introduced a new designation: WCNSF, wounded child, no surviving family (UNICEF, 2025b; WHO, 2024).
These are not collateral tragedies of war. They are the result of deliberate attacks on the conditions required for childhood to exist. According to Save the Children (2024), more than 90 per cent of Gaza's school buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Clean water, food, shelter, and medical care have been systematically targeted. The World Health Organization confirmed that every paediatric hospital in northern Gaza has been rendered non-functional (WHO, 2024). Children are dying not only from airstrikes, but from sepsis, dehydration, and starvation.
None of this is hidden. UN agencies, humanitarian organisations, and medical professionals have documented the scale of harm in real time. Yet professional communities within psychology and education have largely failed to respond. The question is not whether psychologists have seen the images or read the reports. The question is: what constructions of childhood have allowed us to witness this scale of destruction and still do nothing?
As scholars like Burman (2020) and Nsamenang and Lo-Oh (2010) have shown, developmental psychology often universalises Euro-American norms and sidelines the social, political, and racialised conditions in which childhood unfolds. These omissions are not minor. They shape who is seen as a child, whose suffering is recognised, and whose death is rendered intelligible. Butler's (2009) notion of 'ungrievable lives' is helpful here: public grief is not neutral, but politically organised. In Gaza, we are witnessing what happens when an entire population of children is denied not only protection, but recognition.
Children themselves are often attuned to these inequalities. In my own research, children talked about moral dilemmas with surprising nuance, questioning who gets left out, who gets blamed, and what it means to help someone even when it's risky (Pervez & Galea, 2024). Their accounts of empathy were relational and ethical, not sentimental. That clarity throws adult frameworks into sharp relief. If we claim to understand children, then the lives of Palestinian children must matter to us, not in theory, not eventually, but now, while they are being erased.
When frameworks fracture: The silence of Psychology
What does it mean when a profession built on the principles of safeguarding, trauma-informed care, and developmental protection meets the mass death of children with ambiguity or silence?
The psychological consequences of war on children are well established. Chronic exposure to violence is linked to post-traumatic stress, disrupted attachment, and long-term cognitive, emotional, and relational harm (Barber, 2009; Qouta et al., 2008). Gaza is no exception. But unlike previous conflicts, this war has unfolded in full view of the international community. First-hand accounts from UN agencies, paediatricians, and humanitarian workers have been published in real time. Ignorance is not the problem. Inaction is.
The British Psychological Society's public statements have been cautious, generalised, and politically neutral, calling for 'peace' and 'mental health support' while avoiding any reference to the conditions driving mass child death (BPS, 2023). The American Psychological Association issued a formal call for ceasefire only after sustained pressure from members, and even then, its statement was criticised for its vagueness and lack of moral clarity (APA, 2024; Eidelson, 2024).
This is not merely an issue of delay. It is a crisis of ethical coherence. Psychological bodies routinely affirm that children's welfare is paramount, that safeguarding is non-negotiable, and that professionals must attend to the structural conditions that perpetuate trauma and exclusion. These commitments are embedded in clinical guidelines, professional standards, and training frameworks across the field. Why, then, are they applied so inconsistently, mobilised for some crises, yet absent in others, such as Gaza?
In recent history, children have faced devastating violence in Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Congo, Afghanistan, Israel, and beyond, often amid institutional collapse, armed conflict, or international neglect. No child's life is more grievable than another. This is not about taking sides. Gaza stands apart, not only because of the staggering scale of harm, but because speaking plainly about that harm has become so difficult. The fear of being seen as taking sides has silenced even the most basic truth: children are being killed and need protection. And that is what sets this crisis apart. When safeguarding depends on the political acceptability of the victim, it ceases to be a framework for protection. It becomes a tool of moral evasion: reliable when safe, withheld when contested.
Part of the answer lies in what I have described elsewhere as institutional complicity through epistemic omission (Pervez, 2025). When psychology as a profession fails to respond to mass atrocities, it does not remain neutral. It tacitly affirms which forms of harm are deemed legitimate, which crises disrupt professional practice, and which do not. It teaches us, implicitly and explicitly, that some suffering is too political to name.
This has consequences. If our safeguarding frameworks are only operational when harm is deemed non-political, then they are not safeguarding frameworks at all. They are tools of moral selectivity that erode public trust and hollow out our credibility. As psychologists, we cannot credibly champion trauma-informed practice while excusing institutional silence in the face of mass trauma.
Silence is also pedagogical. It teaches students, supervisees, and clients that some lives fall outside the boundaries of care. It models a form of moral risk-aversion that rewards neutrality over responsibility. And it undermines the ethical codes we claim to uphold, not because we disagree with them, but because we apply them selectively, in ways shaped by political convenience rather than moral urgency.
We all know that psychology cannot be apolitical. But when the stakes involve the systematic destruction of a civilian population, nearly half of whom are children, professional neutrality is not only inadequate. It is complicit.
The cost of selective morality: What are we teaching the next generation?
When educational and psychological frameworks respond selectively to harm, that selectivity does not go unnoticed by children and young people. They see which injustices are named in classrooms and which are ignored. They observe which victims are centred in teaching, mental health campaigns, and safeguarding policies, and which are omitted entirely. This is not a peripheral issue. It is a formative lesson in moral development.
Psychological research consistently shows that children's moral reasoning is shaped not just by abstract rules, but by their observations of adult behaviour and institutional values (Carlo et al., 2018; Wainryb & Recchia, 2012). In my own work, children spoke about fairness as intervening when someone is excluded, and kindness as helping others even when it is difficult. They described defending others as an ethical action, especially when power dynamics made it risky (Pervez & Galea, 2024). These are not simplistic accounts. They reveal a nuanced moral agency grounded in relational justice, responsibility, and emotional courage.
Yet the messages children receive from adults often contradict these values. In schools and psychological settings, we encourage young people to challenge bullying, stand against discrimination, and practise empathy. At the same time, they witness the silence surrounding Gaza, the obliteration of schools, hospitals, and homes; the deaths of thousands of children; the absence of grief or outrage in the institutions that claim to protect young lives. They hear adults speak of trauma-informed care while watching tens of thousands of traumatised children left unacknowledged.
The result is not just silence. It is a distortion of what empathy means. It becomes what Spivak (1988) called epistemic violence: the erasure not only of knowledge, but of who is permitted to be known, mourned, or protected. When we avoid naming atrocities, we do not shield children from harm, we distort their understanding of justice and reinforce the idea that some lives are less worthy of care.
A recent study exploring children's views on global inequality found that many young participants questioned why certain kinds of suffering prompted collective action, while other forms were ignored (Cowell et al., 2016). Their responses reflected what many adults may be unwilling to confront: institutional morality is not universal. It is shaped by race, geopolitics, and the discomfort of complicity.
The implications are serious. Avoiding Gaza in our classrooms, therapy spaces, and research does not neutralise the issue, it reinforces the disposability of some children. When empathy is taught without accountability, and values are proclaimed without application, we risk producing a form of professional ethics that is emotionally compelling but morally hollow.
If we ask children to show courage, compassion, and fairness, then we must be prepared to do the same. Our silence does not protect them. It teaches them who matters, and who does not.
From grief to accountability: What can Psychologists do?
Grief without accountability is not enough. It is possible to mourn injustice, even to name it, without disrupting the systems and silences that allow it to continue. For psychology, and for child-centred professions more broadly, the question now is not whether we care. It is whether we are willing to act.
The conditions in Gaza have obliterated the basic structures that child development depends on. A joint report by Save the Children (2024) describes Gaza's education system as having 'completely collapsed'. More than 625,000 children are now out of school, and entire generations face the long-term consequences of trauma, displacement, malnutrition, and injury. These outcomes are not natural consequences of conflict. They are the avoidable result of sustained and targeted state violence, and they demand a coordinated response from those who claim to protect children's wellbeing.
So what might that response look like?
1. Align professional ethics with political reality
Psychologists must insist that safeguarding principles and trauma-informed care apply universally, even, and especially, when the source of harm is politically charged. The BPS Code of Ethics commits us to social justice, respect, and integrity (BPS, 2021), yet those values risk being diluted when applied unevenly across global contexts.
The BPS's October 2023 statement rightly expressed concern for the psychological toll of the Israel-Gaza conflict and offered resources to support members working with those affected. These efforts are not insignificant. But the statement's neutral framing, guided by Charity Commission constraints, fails to convey the scale, structure, and enduring nature of the harm experienced by Palestinian children.
This is not about taking sides. It is about taking seriously the profession's commitment to child welfare, especially when children are unprotected, ungrieved, and structurally abandoned by the very systems meant to defend their rights. Our concern for all children must be credible. That means being willing to speak clearly about those who are being failed most severely. That is not a departure from psychological ethics, it is their most necessary expression.
2. Centre war-affected children in research and practice
Psychological research on war-affected children too often treats trauma as an isolated outcome, detached from the political and structural conditions that produce and sustain it. While frameworks of resilience and recovery are valuable, they risk glossing over the lived realities of children surviving occupation, siege, or forced displacement. Scholars such as Veronese and Castiglioni (2013) have long argued for approaches that situate these experiences within broader histories of dispossession, resistance, and survival.
This lens is not only relevant to Gaza. In Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Afghanistan, and other contexts, children continue to face catastrophic violence amid institutional collapse and international neglect. Yet Gaza stands apart in its combination of real-time visibility, record-level child death tolls, and the absence of coordinated protection. Nowhere else have so many children died so quickly, with so little professional outcry from disciplines that claim to prioritise child wellbeing.
To centre war-affected children in research and practice demands more than clinical assessment. It requires ethical, community-embedded work that resists sanitised narratives and addresses the political conditions shaping children's lives. This is not about weighing one tragedy against another. It is about ensuring that complexity does not become an excuse for silence or neutrality.
3. Create space for critical dialogue in education and training
Avoiding Gaza in teaching and supervision does not protect students, it silences them. Psychologists working in academic and educational settings can incorporate critical pedagogy, support student-led discussion, and challenge the institutional discomfort that treats Palestine as unspeakable. As Tuck and Gorlewski (2015) argue, 'neutrality is not possible in the presence of injustice'.
4. Use your platform and networks
Not every psychologist works in international policy, but all of us can support campaigns for ceasefire, humanitarian access, and child protection. We can donate to trusted organisations such as Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), and UNRWA. We can advocate for displaced Palestinian students to access temporary placements or remote learning. These are small actions, but they signal that children's lives matter, and that our ethics are not performative.
Psychology cannot end a war. But it can refuse to be complicit.
What will be remembered
In recent months, I've been called brave for speaking out, for naming what is happening to children in Gaza, and for challenging the silence of our professional communities. But telling the truth about child death and state violence should not require bravery. It should be the norm. The fact that it carries reputational risk, professional discomfort, or institutional unease tells us everything about how fragile our ethics have become.
Standing up for children should never feel like a career gamble. And yet, for many psychologists, educators, and researchers, it does. The moral cost of that silence is not only borne by those of us who feel it; it is borne by the children who are erased, the students who notice our omissions, and the next generation of professionals who will learn from our example. Our silence is not neutral. It is pedagogical. It teaches by omission.
But the burden of moral courage is not equally distributed. For those of us who are racialised, visibly Muslim, early-career, or precariously employed, the risks of speaking out are sharper and more enduring. Solidarity cannot mean expecting the most vulnerable to carry the heaviest load.
These are not abstract questions for me. They surface in day-to-day professional life: in students' whispered questions about whether they're allowed to speak; in meetings where Palestine is avoided; in the quiet discomfort of ethics review boards that pretend it isn't happening. For those of us who teach dignity, justice, and care as core values, the silence becomes unbearable. And morally incoherent.
In interviews with children, I've listened to young people describe what it means to be fair: to stand up for others, even when it's difficult. They didn't need ethical training to understand what solidarity looks like. They already knew. The question is: do we?
Psychology cannot claim to protect children if it is only willing to do so selectively. This is not about slogans. It is about the daily, often unseen ways we model our values: in what we publish, what we teach, and what we refuse to name. Palestinian children are not collateral. They are not too complex or too controversial to grieve. They are children, entitled to safety, dignity, and care.
When the war ends, and it will, the children will remember who saw them, who spoke for them, and who turned away. So will history. Our journals, our classrooms, and our professional statements will remain as evidence of what we chose to confront, and what we chose to ignore.
This is not a call to heroism. It is a call to integrity.Dr Aneeza Pervez is a socio-developmental psychologist whose research focuses on prosociality, belonging, and moral reasoning in childhood. Her work explores the intersection of psychology, morality, education, and social justice. She is a Teaching Associate in Psychology, University of Nottingham, and Betty Behrens Research Fellow Elect, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. aneeza.pervez@nottingham.ac.uk
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SOURCE:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/what-if-they-were-ours(accessed 1.8.25)
