Admission of injured children from Gaza into Frankfurt hospitals

• When children are affected by armed conflicts, State are obliged under International Humanitarian Law, to undertake “all feasible measures to 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.