Elizabeth Cecilia van Zyl (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ɪˈlizabet səˈsilja fan zɛi̯l]; 22 April 1894 – 9 May 1901)[1][2][3] was a South African child inmate of the British-operated Bloemfontein Concentration Camp [af] who died from typhoid fever during the Second Anglo-Boer War.

They were labelled as 'undesirables' and placed on the lowest food rations because her father, Hermanus Eg(e)bert Pieter van Zyl (Cape Colony, 21 March 1859 – Bothaville, Orange Free State, 31 January 1921),[6] had refused to surrender.

Anti-war activist Emily Hobhouse used her death as an example of the hardships the Boer civilians faced in the concentration camps set up to intern them during the war.

Yet, because her mother was one of the 'undesirables' due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital.

[4] The photo of the emaciated van Zyl was reportedly sent from British author Arthur Conan Doyle, who served as a volunteer doctor during the Boer War, to Joseph Chamberlain.