President Sergio Mattarella said children in Gaza were in "inhuman conditions" on Monday as he received the Burgio Award for people who have made an outstanding contribution to protecting the dignity of children.
"Children's rights are continually at risk and they are violated not only in war zones, where we are in the presence of a real humanitarian emergency affecting childhood in particular," Mattarella said at the award ceremony at the Quirinal Palace in Rome.
"I'm thinking of the heartbreaking memory of children in desperate conditions of malnutrition in Sudan, children abducted and taken away from their families in Ukraine, children, even infants, killed or abducted on the vile day of October 7, of children who die of starvation, even when hospitalized, of malnutrition in hospitals that are without means and often destroyed by bombing as in the stubbornly inhumane conditions in Gaza.
"These are the tragic consequences of the brutal violence of wars".
