The economic toll of the war and displacement from southern Lebanon have left 22% of Lebanese children going to bed hungry, while 20% have been out of school for a year, according to a new UNICEF rapid assessment published on Wednesday.
Hezbollah’s decision to restart hostilities with Israel on March 2 in response to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran led to 1.2 million people being displaced at the height of the conflict, with around 340,000 still unable to return to their homes, according to UN figures. One third of those yet to return to the comfort of their own homes are children.
According to UNICEF, the last six months of war have seen an average of seven children killed or wounded per day, while an estimated 12% of injured children now live with a disability as a result.
Having fled their communities and jobs for safety, 71% of families were found to be struggling to meet their children’s health needs, triple the figure from six months ago. Nearly four in 10 households (38%) said they did not have access to the medicines their children needed, while 31% said their children had not received the health care they needed, mostly due to the cost of treatment.
Around 6% of surveyed households also reported that their children had become sick or injured due to the war, and 34% of those children did not receive the care they needed. A recent assessment also estimated that more than 700,000 people, including 238,000 children, were affected by disruptions to water systems, increasing the risk of preventable infectious diseases spreading.
Children go to bed hungry, child labor rates increase
More than 4 in five households (82%) said they were also struggling to afford more basic necessities compared to three months ago, and 22% said that their children went to bed hungry in the two weeks prior to the survey. More than half, 55%, said they were unable to provide their children with three meals a day, and only 10% of households with children under age 5 said they were able to provide a sufficiently varied diet;
Additionally, 14% of families said that at least one of their children had been forced to take up a job, a figure that stood at only 6% in January 2025.
Beyond the immediate deprivation, UNICEF warned that the impact on academic infrastructure was likely to carry long-term consequences. At the height of the conflict, 433 public education institutions, around a third of Lebanon’s public-school network, were repurposed as shelters, leading to around 100,000 children potentially losing access to their classrooms. Additionally, 436 schools were damaged over the course of the war, and 37 were completely destroyed.
Learning institutions lacking, families can’t meet needs
Stemming from a lack of institutions available for learning, 76% of families said they had more trouble meeting their children’s educational needs compared to three months ago, 46% said they had had to reduce expenses related to education, and 17% said they had to stop their children’s education altogether.
One in five households reported that their children did not attend school last year at all, and of those who did attend, 29% were said to have been unable to learn fully, often because of difficulty focusing and emotional distress.
“Without urgent and sustained action, an entire generation of children and young people risks carrying the scars of this crisis into adulthood,” UNICEF Lebanon Representative Marcoluigi Corsi said.
