The Federal Ministry of the Interior, under Minister Dobrindt (CDU), is blocking the admission of injured children from Gaza. The arguments for this are flimsy: there are security concerns, aid on the ground is more effective, and we’re already providing a lot of financial assistance.
In fact, we are constantly taking in injured and sick children—from Ukraine, from Afghanistan, from Africa—but children from Gaza are being denied help, without any real justification.
Winter is approaching; the UN can barely prevent a famine in Gaza, and the medical infrastructure there has been destroyed. A humanitarian catastrophe is looming, triggered in part by the deafening silence that prevails in Germany. Criticism of the Israeli government is quashed with sweeping accusations of anti-Semitism, and a climate of fear has gripped most of the media as well, so that there is hardly any reporting on the events in Gaza.
Just last week, a little girl in Gaza was forced to watch as her mother was burned alive following an Israeli attack. The girl, now an orphan, suffered burns herself, not to mention severe trauma. She will receive little help.
YOU can help! Please write to your local representative and your mayor. Ask them to advocate for medical aid for the most vulnerable. You can read all the arguments in our brochure, and here you’ll find access to letter templates:
Es gibt Fortschritte! Wir haben viele Unterstützer: Ärzte ohne Grenzen, Ärzte der Welt, Care, IPPNW, Seebrücken, DPG, Health not Arms, Friends of Standing Together und viele, viele mehr. Zusammen bewegen wir viel - und mit mehr Zeit noch mehr.
New deadline: 04/09/2027 Signatures at the time of the change: 270 (144 in Frankfurt)
Wir haben die Laufzeit der Petition bis zum Jahresende verlängert, weil wir guten Grund haben, anzunehmen, dass sie sich gegen Jahresende sehr gut verbreiten wird.
New deadline: 12/31/2026 Signatures at the time of the change: 99 (37 in Frankfurt)
Argumente wurden hinzugefügt, weshalb Frankfurt eine geeignete Stadt für die Aufnahme verletzter Kinder ist.
New justification:
When children are affected by armed conflicts, State are obliged under International Humanitarian Law, to undertake “all feasible measures to ensureto ensure protection and care” for the children, to ensure that the children “do not take a direct part in hostilities” (Art. 38 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; Geneva Conventions) – which the parties are not fulfilling right now. The legal basis is constituted by section 22, sentence 2 German Federal Residence Act (AufenthG): admission is possible for urgent humanitarian reasons, also if initiated by municipalities or federal states. Section 23(1) of the German Federal Residence Act: state admission programs of the federal states in coordination with the federal government.
The urgency to act is enormous: Surgeries are often done without anaesthesia or pain medication. Many of the children are weakened due to famine and days without food. Gaza's medical infrastructure is vastly destroyed. The lack of medical care can lead to lifelong impairments and death.
Germany has experience in medically evacuating injured children (e.g. Yazidi children). 2 children from Gaza have already been treated in Germany.
Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Norway have already admitted children for treatment.
Hanover, Kiel, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Leipzig and Bremen as well as Hamburg and Freiburg have already advocated for the admission of injured children from Gaza and called on the federal government to take appropriate action.
Frankfurt is an ideal city for accepting children from Gaza:
With its world-class hospitals, Frankfurt offers highly specialized treatment options. Frankfurt laid the foundations of the German tradition of fundamental rights in 1848 at St. Paul’s Church — a city that codified human dignity is obliged to uphold it. The IG Farben Building, once the administrative headquarters of industrialized destruction, is now a university campus with a hospital — Frankfurt has already transformed sites of perpetration into places of healing and can continue this by caring for children from Gaza.
From 2015 onward, Frankfurt took in more refugees from Syria, relative to its population, than any other major German city. In 2022–23, the city coordinated the reception of thousands of Ukrainian war refugees within just a few weeks — including wounded civilians who received surgical treatment at the University Hospital and the Berufsgenossenschaftliche Unfallklinik (BGU) Frankfurt. The BGU Frankfurt is one of the largest trauma centers in Europe and has demonstrably treated war casualties from Ukraine, meaning that the operational capacity for precisely this type of case has already been tested.
Signatures at the time of the change: 27 (5 in Frankfurt)
