Israel
ActionAid removes false claim that more women and children killed in Gaza than ‘any other conflict in the last two decades’
The error was included on material for the fundraising group’s Gaza appeal
August 14, 2025 09:25
The error was included on material for the fundraising group’s Gaza appeal
August 14, 2025 09:25Fundraising group ActionAid has removed a false claim from its website, which suggested that more women and children have died in the conflict in the Strip than in any other in the last 20 years.
The claim read: “More women and children have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza than in any other conflict in the last two decades.”
According to data from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, which has been repeatedly questioned as an overestimation of the true death toll, 25,300 women and children have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
In comparison, the Tigray War in Ethiopia, which lasted for two years between 2020 and 2022, saw the deaths of approximately 33,000 women alone, per a study led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Likewise, the civil war in Syria since 2011 has resulted in the deaths of over 42,000 women and children, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
And, in Yemen, at least 85,000 children died from starvation over the course of just three years between 2015 and 2018, according to Save The Children. In Sudan, over half a million children are believed to have died from famine as a direct result of the civil war there, the Preparatory Committee of the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate reported in January.
According to ActionAid, the inaccuracy was removed before the charity received a complaint from UKLFI, a legal advocacy group
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.
"We are pleased that ActionAid has now changed its website, and is not relying on false statements to encourage donations.”
The ActionAid donor who alerted UKLFI to the false claim added: “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.”
When reached by phone, a spokesperson for ActionAid said: “Our job is to tell the truth, which of course I can see that we've fallen down on this particular point, which is why it was removed.”
In a further statement, ActionAid UK said via lawyers: “We are aware of a complaint raised by UKLFI regarding an inaccurate statistic on our website. In fact, the content in question was removed immediately on our discovery of this error, and before we received any correspondence from UKLFI. ActionAid UK is committed to ensuring all statements on our website and used in fundraising communications are accurate and based on credible sources. We will continue to review our content regularly to maintain transparency and uphold public trust. We thank the Jewish Chronicle for their interest in ActionAid’s accuracy and hope they hold all of their sources to the same standard in the future."
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