Violence has shaped the setting in which successive generations of children living in the occupied territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have grown up. Numerous UN and international non-governmental agencies have worked for many years with the aim of protecting children from this violence and realising their basic human rights, but the limits of their capacity to achieve this have been all too apparent.

Research conducted by Dr Jason Hart and Claudia Lo Forte has explored and identified the reasons for the failures of these organisations. They argue that international agencies and their donors have been constrained by serious flaws in their understanding of and willingness to address the political situation in the occupied Palestinian territory. The research recommends that international agencies and their donors engage in, and are judged against, a concerted and multilevel solution rooted in the realisation of human rights and child protection principles.