The charity ActionAid has amended its website after making false claims that “More women and children have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza than any other conflict in the last two decades.”

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) researched the comparative numbers killed, and found that conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen had all resulted in far higher fatalities of women and children in the past 20 years than the current Israel-Gaza conflict.

• Even relying on Hamas’s discredited total fatality figures, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy report dated May 2025[1] estimates that 25,300 women and children have died in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

Unfortunately there have been many other recent conflicts in the world, which have not received as much publicity as the one in Gaza, but which have resulted in many more fatalities of women and children.

• Approximately 33,000 women were killed in Ethiopia’s Tigray region between 2020 and 2022[2]
• In Sudan 522,000 children are estimated to have died from famine as a result of the war[3]
• 199,068 civilians perished in Syria since 2011 as a direct consequence of its civil war, of whom 42,463 were women and children[4]
• In Yemen, conservative estimates show 85,000 children died from starvation between 2015 and 2018[5], whilst UN data suggests a total of 259,000 children died between 2014 and 2021, due to war[6]

UKLFI had been alerted to the misinformation by a supporter of ActionAid, who was extremely upset to have been sent misinformation. She said:  “I was horrified to see it as I’ve had a monthly direct debit supporting their work for roughly 20 years (which I have now cancelled).”

UKLFI wrote to ActionAid pointing out that their statement that “More women and children have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza than any other conflict in the last two decades” was wrong, and why.

The incorrect statement was up on ActionAid’s website at least from 1 July 2025 to 4 August 2025, the day that UKLFI sent the letter.  Images of the page showing the offending piece of information can be seen on archive.org.  UKLFI has not heard back from ActionAid regarding any explanation about why the statement was allowed to be on its website during this period.

A UKLFI spokesperson said “The Gaza conflict is constantly in the media so people get the impression that it is the worst war ever.  It is tragic that many other conflicts are not covered by the media, presumably because they do not involve Israel, and far more people have been killed. People do not march on the streets for the people of Tigray, Sudan, Syria or Yemen, and we hear nothing about them.

We are pleased that ActionAid has now changed its website, and is not relying on false statements to encourage donations.”

[1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/pdf/PolicyNote158Epsteinv3.pdf

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40399978/

[3] https://sudantribune.net/article296185/

[4] https://www.syriahr.com/en/358243/

[5] https://www.savethechildren.net/news/yemen-85000-children-may-have-died-starvation-start-war

[6] https://www.undp.org/yemen/publications/assessing-impact-war-yemen-pathways-recovery