Pakistani siblings renew unswerving vow for Gaza’s children on World Peace Day

LAHORE, Sep 20 (APP):As the world observes International Day of Peace on September 21, two young Pakistani siblings — Ubaydah Al Fiddhah Hafiah (12), and her brother Ghulam Bishar Hafi (14) — have once again turned global attention toward the unhealed wounds of Gaza’s children, pledging that their voice cannot fall silent until the last child of every conflict zone is heard.

In a press release issued here on Sunday, they reaffirmed their blood-written note: “Cultivate Peace for Innocent Children — Reap Peace for the World.” For over two years, the brother-sister duo, have run their campaign “Voice for the Voiceless” — a relentless, ‘blood-as-ink’ testimony against the world’s injustice.

Their campaign of open letters to the world authorities began on 2024’s International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression, when the siblings first wrote their protest notes, resolutions and open letter to the UN, in their own blood. It has since grown into a sustained correspondence: an online petition titled “Stop Infanticide in Gaza,” launched on International Human Solidarity Day, and repeated blood-written appeals addressed directly to world leaders — and to UN bodies, imploring them to end the siege of Gaza’s children. Marking the UN World Humanitarian Day, their latest resolution described Gaza’s children as trapped, deprived of food and medicine, and reduced to conditions beneath basic human dignity — a plea they have carried, unaltered in its urgency, to every available international platform.

Inspired and guided by their parents, Prof. Dr. Aurangzeb Hafi, and Dr. Bareera N.B., their continued advocacy has not gone unanswered. The Palestinian Ambassador to Pakistan, Dr. Zuhair Zaid, hosted a warm reception for the siblings at embassy, declaring that Palestine now “owns” these two children and the petitions, resolutions and protest notes they have issued on its behalf — even pledging to consider them among his own. In a further gesture of solidarity, the duo extended a physical UN exhibition, “Gaza, Palestine — A Crisis of Humanity, A Cry for Justice,” into a virtual space so the world could not look away.

Their courage has been honoured on the global stage: on World Children’s Day, the siblings received the UN’s Grace de Monaco International Medal and the Eglantyne Jebb Platinum Pen for Peace, along with a two-year study scholarship — an honour they chose to dedicate not to themselves, but to Gaza’s children. Their reach has since extended to the children of Congo, Kashmir, Mozambique, Sudan, Myanmar and Syria, all counted among the world’s forgotten young victims of war and aggression. Their unwavering resolve has also drawn the recognition of the Britain-based Impact Hallmarks, which has named Ghulam Bishar and Ubaydah among its ‘Young Trailblazing Impactpreneurs of the 21st-Century, formally including the siblings’ campaign in its final verdict.

On this year’s World Peace Day, the siblings renewed their pledge: for as long as a single child anywhere lies buried under rubble, orphaned, or amputated by war, their pens — and their blood, if it must be — would keep writing.