A building destroyed in the Israeli bombings in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, on April 17, 2026. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Amid the pressure on children during the 45 days war between Hezbollah and Israel, UPEL (L'Union Pour La Protection de L'enfance Au Liban) assisted the needs of 980 children across all of its services.
In a recent report published by the NGO in which it recounted its activities during the war, UPEL said that that across the war, it stayed present at "every level of its mandate, from court hearings and preliminary investigations through IDP shelter protection, emergency distribution, and the April 8 mass-casualty response."
During the war, Israel killed more than 2,200 people in Lebanon, wounded more than 7,500, and displaced more than a million. The war also had a huge toll on children, with 170 children killed and more than 700 wounded.
The organization's reach was concentrated in Mount Lebanon, but also extended to Beirut, the Bekaa, and southern Lebanon.
Across the 45 days, UPEL teams "logged 154 individual distributions [food, clothing, baby formula, diapers, hygiene kits, blankets, cash, and other categories], reaching 1,688 people including 650 children," the report adds.
Despite the war, UPEL, which is Lebanon's sole NGO mandated by law for juvenile protection, did not stop its legal work: Through the wartime window, 122 children were processed through Lebanon's juvenile justice system. Moreover, 85 court hearings were attended, 15 new protection files opened, and 60 protection cases followed up.
Furthermore, the organization noted that it recorded twenty cases of sexual violence against children during the war, including five inside IDP shelters.
As for the April 8 Israeli attacks, 23 child protection cases were managed by UPEL in the first 72 hours, including eight who were reunited with their family and two who are still missing, and on whom follow-up is ongoing.
On April 8, just hours after the Iran-U.S. cease-fire agreement, Israel carried out many simultaneous airstrikes in Lebanon in less than 10 minutes, killing hundreds of people across the country, including in Beirut.
