The Rights to and Within Education in Armed Conflicts: The Case of Gaza 2023–2025

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an important study and it has been contextualised well, within the global setting of war, which is helpful for readers to understand the full scale of children's experience. The methodology is clear and the case for the selection of papers examined is made well. 

When the author/s refer to different studies (eg Frounfelker, Weinberg, Dryden-Peterson0 it would strengthen the article if these were contextualised so it is clear where each study was conducted and where mention is made of studies in Africa, the names of the countries would also be helpful. 

Lines 121-123 in which you talk about the forcible transfer of children: this is slightly unclear what is meant. A very brief explanation would help the reader. 

The theoretical frame is very interesting. I wonder whether more critique is needed specifically concerning Ahmed's frame of whiteness. It seems like there is an implicit assumption of the whiteness of the Israelis, as opposed to the Palestinians. This could be problematic given that the Jewish people have both historically and currently been racialised as non-white, and in extreme cases non-human. 

The ethics of the study would be strengthened by a short discussion about the positionality of the researchers to be clear about their connection with the study material. 

Line 321 contains a typo.

The results section was slightly difficult to follow. To ensure a continuity of approach, I wonder whether the results section would benefit from including the themes which were identified through the document analysis. Rather than trying to answer the research questions, whether the discussion could be around each theme. The themes were not obvious and it seems that this is a very important part of the findings. 

The discussion of the findings needs to continue to reflect the criticality found in the first part of the article. 

Figure 2 which is presented in the discussion and conclusion section has many typos which need revising. A paragraph explaining the model would also help.

The conclusion is also slightly obscured, so I wonder if it would benefit from being separated from the discussion. 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The clarity of writing is generally good and there is a strong flow to the piece until the Results section. It was much harder to read.  There are a number of typos and I think the structure does not assist the reader as I have commented about. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments that have helped us to developped the manuscript!

Comment :The theoretical frame is very interesting. I wonder whether more critique is needed specifically concerning Ahmed's frame of whiteness. It seems like there is an implicit assumption of the whiteness of the Israelis, as opposed to the Palestinians. This could be problematic given that the Jewish people have both historically and currently been racialised as non-white, and in extreme cases non-human. 

Response:  

Thank you for this comment. Ahmed frames whiteness not just as a racial category, but as an embodied perceptual structure that governs who belongs and who is out of place in a specific social and spatial order. In our article, we refer to this embodied structure, not in relation to children's colour or race.  We have now even more clearly included Israeli children as a category of victims of violence. We do not intend to introduce one group in opposition to the other. However, we have now developed Ahmed's concept of whiteness to discuss the EU's opposition to the application of sanctions against Israel and the international political failure to stop extreme forms of violence committed against the Palestinian population, which takes place in a broad legal context that clearly prohibits this type of violence.

Comments: The ethics of the study would be strengthened by a short discussion about the positionality of the researchers to be clear about their connection with the study material. 

Response: We have developed our position on the research now in the discussion, see last paragraph. However, we have not included information about our own religious or ethnic background, we do not think this is necessary because we have no other connection to the groups of children analysed in this research.

Comments: The results section was slightly difficult to follow. To ensure a continuity of approach, I wonder whether the results section would benefit from including the themes which were identified through the document analysis. Rather than trying to answer the research questions, whether the discussion could be around each theme. The themes were not obvious and it seems that this is a very important part of the findings. 

Response: We fully agree with this comment. We have now better explained why we have analysed the results in the methodology section. The categories found in the analysis are now presented more clearly. We have introduced and examplied each of the categories found. We hope that the issues are now clearer.

Comment: The discussion of the findings needs to continue to reflect the criticality found in the first part of the article. The conclusion is also slightly obscured, so I wonder if it would benefit from being separated from the discussion.

Response: We have structured and developed the discussion and conclusion more clearly, relating the results to theory, previous research and international legislation.

Comment: Figure 2 which is presented in the discussion and conclusion section has many typos which need revising. A paragraph explaining the model would also help.

Response: Figures 1 and 2 are excluded from the article.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Congratulations! A well elaborated and very important paper.

I added some suggestions to the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your comments that have helped us to developped the manuscript!

Comment: (data from 2023) could be actualized

Response: We have actualized the situation of Children i Gaza and included data from  11 October 2023 until 1 July 2025 

Comment: Data introduced in the result paragraph 1 

Response: The result and discussion sections has been developed and the citations of the documents are now entered and selected differently.

Comment: Not all work is hazardous and dangerous work

Respose: We agree with your comment. We refer to the organisations' own reports that consider the reported forced labour to be dangerous. The selected reports  show in some cases that the war has forced children to start working to support their families.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a critically important topic and although I was not planning to commit to any peer reviews in the near future, I made an exception because I was so excited for the potential of this article. Sadly, relative to expectations, I have never been more disappointed in the delivery of the promise of an article. My disappointment started literally with the very first words: "The Since the." I hoped that the rest of the article was more carefully drafted than the opening sentence.

Unfortunately, the first two sections (Introduction and the Gaza Conflict) failed to convey the incredibly complicated history of Gaza, Israel, and Hamas in a way that will ensure that this is viewed as an academic article rather than a political one. It is an incredibly difficult needle to thread and I held my breath as a critic of both Hamas and the Israeli government and a fierce defender of children's rights both in Israel and Gaza, but the authors revealed biases through their framing and omissions. Nonetheless, I believed (and still do!) that section could be further developed to be more even-handed.

However, I then read the section on the international framework for the protection of children in armed conflict and it was primarily just a narrative list of international treaties and instruments with no substantive analysis. Moreover, the conclusion that there is a "deep gap between legal obligations and their effective enforcement" suggested to me that the authors are not expert in international law, children's rights, or treaties as they would know that most of the treaties, instruments, and principles cited are not usually enforceable, but rather normative through reporting and goal-setting. 

The next section, "State of the Art," is misnamed. "Children in Modern Armed Conflict" would be more accurate and appropriate. Overall, I thought this section was the most solid and I had very few edits, but frankly, I would have preferred the authors focused on how modern warfare affects the children's educational rights (the focus of the article) rather than an outline of all of the ways childen are harmed in armed conflicts. I did note that in several places the authors tied the harms to impact on education, and I would have liked to seee that developed more consistently throughout.

I found the theoretical framework intriguing, but never tied into the article and there was never any support for the authors' assertion that the violation of children's rights to education in Gaza was intentionally targeted in power and cruelty. Certainly, this could very well be true, but you must provide evidence to prove theories to be true! Sadly, the authors failed to prove that here.

I appreciated the authors' "Materials and Methods" section because it provided a framework to help the reader understand how the authors had intended to conduct their analysis thematically across the UN documents cited, although at one point the article specified 14 official documents, but only 11 were listed in the table. These should be consistent. Again, this section could have been revised to make it stronger.

However, in Section 5, "Results," it all fell apart and I lost my faith and then my hope in the integrity of the article. The section opened with the sentence: "The text continues here." This suggested to me that AI or another technological device was used to construct this section in full or in part and it was not carefully edited by the "authors." Then, on page 8, lnes 325-331, two back-to-back quotes are just packed together without any meaningful discussion or transition. 

You then start citing the Cambridge report a total of 17 times over the next four+ pages, making this section largely just a restatement of sections of that report. Many of the passages are about the impact of war on children, rather than weaving details of the Cambridge report into a high quality analysis of the violation of childen's educational rights in Gaza within the promised theoretical framework.

On page 9, line 380 to 387, you refer to dates (months and sometimes days) without referencing a specific year, which again indicated to the reader that you were being sloppy in your drafting or simply cutting and pasting without any thoughtful revising, let alone proofreading.

Page 10 was also a mess. Your citation on line 414 is not consistent with your internal citations or your references. You used the exact same sentence to open two different paragraphs one after the other ("The protection of educational institutions and the student body is at the heart of the mandate of UNESCO.") It was not a proper, logical use of the repetitive sentence either time. The first time, on line 426, you follow that sentence by saying "We urge the international community....," which is obviously out of place in an academic article. Moreover, the sentence has multiple proofreading errors. 

Your next paragraph, which starts on line 435 with the exact same sentence is unsupported. That is followed by two more back-to-back quotations that have no context nor transition.

That paragraph is then followed with another random paragraph that starts with a out of place sentence followed by what appears to be a statement from UNICEF, but without any context, let alone quotation marks.

It was at this point that I gave up on your piece. The children of Gaza deserve better.

Nonetheless, I continued to the end. On page 11, you went from the topic of space to suicide without transition or context.

You made assertions in 5.3 without support and need a better transition. The paragraph at lines 481-488 is repetitive.

Out of place in an academic article, you present these attacks without any citation or authorities to support your assertion that the loss of children's educational rights in Gaza are premeditated and intentional attacks on Palestinian cultural heritage. Although this could be true, in the academic setting, it is critically required that you present evidence to support all assertions.

On page 13, lines 509-515, you have two more back-to-back quotes with context or transition. 

The sentence at lines 523-525 does not logically follow the immediately preceding sentence at lines 521-523.

Your data from the Flash Appeal is outdated. I would use the 2025 figures to more clearly make your point regarding disparity of funding education relative to food. 

In your discussion and conclusions on page 13, your assertions are not supported by analytical support in the paper.

Finally, you introduce at least two new terms/concepts at the end, "the new wars" at line 598 and the "pedagogy of cruelty" at line 606 without developing them previously. The conclusion should bring everything together for the reader, rather than introduce new concepts that are unsupported by the substantive analysis. 

In short, I think there is a lot that could and should be said about the violation of children's educational rights in Gaza since late 2023. It is important for those children to have academics document and analyze their rights violations. That process requires more focused and thoughtful analysis than is demonstrated in this work, unfortunately. To the extent that you used AI or another technology, to construct or draft parts of this article, I caution you to avoid that approach in the future. 

  

 

nt    

 

 

   

   

Author Response

Thank you for all your comments! They were a very good support to develop the manuscript!!!

Comment: Unfortunately, the first two sections (Introduction and the Gaza Conflict) failed to convey the incredibly complicated history of Gaza, Israel, and Hamas in a way that will ensure that this is viewed as an academic article rather than a political one. It is an incredibly difficult needle to thread and I held my breath as a critic of both Hamas and the Israeli government and a fierce defender of children's rights both in Israel and Gaza, but the authors revealed biases through their framing and omissions. Nonetheless, I believed (and still do!) that section could be further developed to be more even-handed.

Respose: We agree that the section could be developed further. We have made the following changes: the introduction is now shorter. The Gaza conflict is now presented in a separate section. It is developed from a historical perspective taken from FN documents. In the section 4.1  The limitation of the research we dicussed arguments for and against the choice of the analysed documents in our research.

Comment: However, I then read the section on the international framework for the protection of children in armed conflict and it was primarily just a narrative list of international treaties and instruments with no substantive analysis. Moreover, the conclusion that there is a "deep gap between legal obligations and their effective enforcement" suggested to me that the authors are not expert in international law, children's rights, or treaties as they would know that most of the treaties, instruments, and principles cited are not usually enforceable, but rather normative through reporting and goal-setting. 

Response: We agree with the evaluator on the point that the international framework was previously mainly a mere narrative list of international treaties. Therefore, we have now developed this section by including the argument on the selection of these documents. We now even refer to these documents in the discussion. However, as experts in the field of children's rights we do not agree with the evaluator concerning the role of international legislation in this case. It is important to even refer to this legislation and the gap between legislation and practice, in order to change and develop the practice as well. International legislation provides a framework that can offer both possibilities and challenges to practice.  In some countries, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is part of national legislation.

Comment; The next section, "State of the Art," is misnamed. "Children in Modern Armed Conflict" would be more accurate and appropriate. Overall, I thought this section was the most solid and I had very few edits, but frankly, I would have preferred the authors focused on how modern warfare affects the children's educational rights (the focus of the article) rather than an outline of all of the ways children are harmed in armed conflicts. I did note that in several places the authors tied the harms to impact on education, and I would have liked to seee that developed more consistently throughout.

Response: We include the evaluator's suggestion regarding the title in this section. However, as experts in the field of children's rights, we argue that attention needs to be paid to both the right to education and the conditions under which education takes place (the right within education). We have developed the argument on the integrative perspective in relation to and within the right to education. We have even included new references in relation to the right to education.

Comment: I found the theoretical framework intriguing, but never tied into the article and there was never any support for the authors' assertion that the violation of children's rights to education in Gaza was intentionally targeted in power and cruelty. Certainly, this could very well be true, but you must provide evidence to prove theories to be true! Sadly, the authors failed to prove that here.

Response: We have developed the use of the selected theoretical starting points in the analysis of the research results. We have not used the selected theories to prove the hypothesis, but to develop a better understanding of the phenomena studied. We have introduced this section with an explanation of how theory is used in this article.

Comment: I appreciated the authors' "Materials and Methods" section because it provided a framework to help the reader understand how the authors had intended to conduct their analysis thematically across the UN documents cited, although at one point the article specified 14 official documents, but only 11 were listed in the table. These should be consistent. Again, this section could have been revised to make it stronger.

Respose: We have included new documents in the empirical data. We now have 16 documents. We have developed the methodology of the section and included a list of the 16 documents analysed. The period analysed runs from October 2023 to 1 July 2025.

Comment: However, in Section 5, "Results," it all fell apart and I lost my faith and then my hope in the integrity of the article. The section opened with the sentence: "The text continues here." This suggested to me that AI or another technological device was used to construct this section in full or in part and it was not carefully edited by the "authors." Then, on page 8, lnes 325-331, two back-to-back quotes are just packed together without any meaningful discussion or transition. 

You then start citing the Cambridge report a total of 17 times over the next four+ pages, making this section largely just a restatement of sections of that report. Many of the passages are about the impact of war on children, rather than weaving details of the Cambridge report into a high quality analysis of the violation of childen's educational rights in Gaza within the promised theoretical framework.

On page 9, line 380 to 387, you refer to dates (months and sometimes days) without referencing a specific year, which again indicated to the reader that you were being sloppy in your drafting or simply cutting and pasting without any thoughtful revising, let alone proofreading.

Respose: We have completely changed the results section. We have explained how the results are introduced and explained. We have introduced and exemplified with different quotes from all selected organisations. We have introduced tables to present the categories according to the selected organisations. Finally, the results are discussed in relation to the selected theoretical starting points, legal framework and previous research studies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Second review of:  The right to and within education in armed conflicts: The case of Gaza 2023-2025

I think this is an important article but because of the polarised nature of the current discourse around the war in Gaza, I think for this article to be taken seriously by the academy there are some issues the authors need to consider:

• The response to comments about positionality suggests that there is a lack of understanding of its role both ethically and for trustworthiness. There are concerns of implicit bias within the article, which may be invisible to the authors themselves. Although generally the article is well balanced, there are a few phrases and sentences which suggests a positionality which is unclear. To remediate this, a clear statement of positionality would strengthen the article.
• This article may help: Gaywood, D., Bertram, T., & Pascal, C. (2020). Involving refugee children in research: emerging ethical and positioning issues. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 28(1), 149–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2020.1707369
• In the same vein, there is not a robust argument in which the authors make it clear why they have chosen the Gazan war over all the other wars which could have been chosen. There are other wars where children’s education has been overtly severely disrupted so there needs to be a rationale for focussing on the Gaza war.
• The effect of the war on Israeli children is mentioned briefly which adds balance but the discussion seems to rely solely on the 7 October attacks, however there is work which has investigated the ongoing impact of living with air raids on Israeli children’s education which could be drawn upon.
• Rita Segato’s work is very well explained and utilised within the discussion however the first review questioned the use of Sara Ahmed’s work on whiteness. The rationale for the use of her work is far less robust and if the authors wish to continue to include it as a theoretical model, further explanation is needed to address the comments within the original review.
• Although some work has been done on the results section – it would improve the text if this section could be simplified to headline results, so the discussion section becomes the clear focus. The authors could plan to report on other parts of the results in another article, rather than trying squeeze all the results into this one.
• 18 lines 741-744 are repeated.
• There are a number of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors throughout the text. A thorough reading and editing is needed to eliminate these.
• There is no conclusion or summary to end the article.

Author Response

 

Author's Reply to the Review Report (Reviewer 1) 20250801

Evaluators’ comments	Response from the authors
The response to comments about positionality suggests that there is a lack of understanding of its role both ethically and for trustworthiness. There are concerns of implicit bias within the article, which may be invisible to the authors themselves. Although generally the article is well balanced, there are a few phrases and sentences which suggests a positionality which is unclear. To remediate this, a clear statement of positionality would strengthen the article.	We have now clarified our position both as researchers and in terms of methodology in section 6.2 Ethical considerations. We have highlighted the changes in yellow.
This article may help: Gaywood, D., Bertram, T., & Pascal, C. (2020). Involving refugee children in research: emerging ethical and positioning issues. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 28(1), 149–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2020.1707369	We agree that this article was relevant to this research and we mentioned it in section 6.2 Ethical considerations. We have highlighted the changes in yellow.
In the same vein, there is not a robust argument in which the authors make it clear why they have chosen the Gazan war over all the other wars which could have been chosen. There are other wars where children’s education has been overtly severely disrupted so there needs to be a rationale for focussing on the Gaza war.	We agree that there are other wars around the world, but we have now clearly argued why Gaza is a special case that needs to be studied in particuarly. Base don UN:s documents indicating  that …”Gaza was already registered in March 2024 as the place with the ‘highest number of child deaths in more than four years of global conflict (UN 2024)” ’ we argue that we have compelling reasons to limit our article solely to violence against children IN Gaza. We hope that the reviewer will accept our arguments based on UN reports. We have developed this section, but we have not changed the focus of our article, i.e. Gaza. We argue that we have scientifically explained why the case of Gaza is particularly relevant to this article and to future research on extreme forms of violence against childrens rights to and in eduacation in armed conflicts. See section 6.2 Ethical considerations, the tittle for the section 2 and the conclusion. We have highlighted all these changes in yellow.
The effect of the war on Israeli children is mentioned briefly which adds balance but the discussion seems to rely solely on the 7 October attacks, however there is work which has investigated the ongoing impact of living with air raids on Israeli children’s education which could be drawn upon.	We disagree with the reviewer that we should investigate the effects of air strikes on the education of Israeli children. The article focused on violence in Gaza. The reasons for choosing children in Gaza are well argued in the article. Our article focused on violence in Gaza. This article does not seek to compare the effects of violence in armed conflicts on children in Gaza and those in Israel.  The article's conclusions, based on UN reports, pointed out that even some Israeli children were victims of the Hamas attack in 2023. We have presented this result very clearly. However, this research focused on violence in Gaza, not in Israel, and we will not change it. We hope that the reviewer can accept the conscious limitation of our article, based on the UN report that points to Gaza as an extremely violent place for children due to Israel's attack. . See section 6.2 Ethical considerations, the tittle for the section 2 and the conclusion. We have highlighted all these changes in yellow.
Rita Segato’s work is very well explained and utilised within the discussion however the first review questioned the use of Sara Ahmed’s work on whiteness. The rationale for the use of her work is far less robust and if the authors wish to continue to include it as a theoretical model, further explanation is needed to address the comments within the original review.	We have now developed the argumentation regarding the use of Sara Ahmed as a theoretical tool for analysis. We consider Ahmed to be a relevant theoretical tool for understanding the impacts of forced displacement on children's human rights.  We have developed this argument, but we have not changed the use of Ahmed as the central theoretical starting point of the article. See section 8.2. Violence understood as a non-recognition of Gaza children as right holders. We have highlighted the changes in yellow.
Although some work has been done on the results section – it would improve the text if this section could be simplified to headline results, so the discussion section becomes the clear focus. The authors could plan to report on other parts of the results in another article, rather than trying squeeze all the results into this one.	We disagree with the evaluator's suggestion to limit the results section to the main findings. We believe it is necessary to include examples from the FN documents due to the chosen methodology, i.e. thematic analysis of texts. However, we have reduced the number of citations to one per category to make the article easier to read.
18 lines 741-744 are repeated.	We have chaged it
There are a number of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors throughout the text. A thorough reading and editing is needed to eliminate these.	The language has been reviewed a second time by our university English reviewer. Please note that the language editing is in GB English, with -ise spellings and the appropriate grammar.
There is no conclusion or summary to end the article.	We have now included a conclusión

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf