Children and Torture
Displaced Palestinian children crowd to get rice meals due to the lack of aid in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit: Anas-mohamed, shutterstock, 2024.
Children experience torture in ways that differ fundamentally from adults because their brains, identities, and emotional regulation systems are still developing. Trauma can interrupt this development, leading to intense fear responses, regression, and long‑term difficulties with trust, learning, and relationships.
When parents or caregivers have also been tortured, children often absorb the emotional consequences – creating intergenerational trauma where fear, stress, and disrupted attachment patterns are passed down through family dynamics.
Effective rehabilitation combines child‑focused, trauma‑informed therapy with strong family support, helping rebuild safety, stability, and emotional connection. With consistent care and community‑based interventions, children can gradually recover and regain a sense of security.
Watch The full ‘IRCT insights’ where Psychiatrist, Pau Perez-Sales explains the fundamentals in treating and documenting trauma in children due to war and torture.
In Focus:Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational Trauma
Survivors Speak Out:Children’s Experiences
The Syrian uprising of 2011 began after the Assad regime’s secret police arrested and tortured children. Here Ahmed, a 13-year-old schoolboy at the time, describes why he joined a protest for freedom in Syria and the torture he endured after his arrest.
Manar Shweiki was 14 years old when she was arrested and beaten by Israeli police after an altercation with Jewish settlers as she walked home from school in Jerusalem.
In Focus:Children in Gaza
Drawing made by a child during Israel’s war on Gaza as part of therapy conducted by IRCT Member The Gaza community mental health Programme (GCMHP)
“We encourage the children to draw … and they say, the airplane came here, it bombed us. We were under the rubble and then left. And the therapist tries to get rid of the fears, help him feel that it’s
gone, safe, that if his house was destroyed, for example, it will be
rebuilt.”
In Focus:Rehabilitation of Child Survivors of Torture
“The consequences of war are in many senses similar to those of torture”
In Focus:Documentation and the Updated Istanbul Protocol
Research:Torture Journal
