Hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties. Civilians face mounting challenges in accessing essential food supplies. Health facilities no longer have fuel and run on small amounts they have secured locally. These are expected to run out in the next day or so. Water production capacity is at 5 per cent of normal levels. Pre-positioned humanitarian supplies have already been depleted. Vulnerable people are at greatest risk, and children are dying at an alarming rate and being denied their right to protection, food, water and health care.
Nearly one-third of the population of Palestine was food insecure before this conflict in Gaza. Today, stocks in shops are nearly exhausted and bakeries are closing, while tens of thousands of people are displaced and unable to cook or safely purchase food.
While a first but limited shipment of life-saving humanitarian supplies from the United Nations and the Egyptian Red Crescent entered Gaza Saturday on 20 trucks, passing through the Rafah Crossing, UN agencies said Gaza was a desperate humanitarian situation before the most recent hostilities, but now it is in catastrophic situation. “The world must do more.”
The first shipment will provide an urgently needed lifeline to some of the hundreds of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, who have been cut off from water, food, medicine, fuel and other essentials. “But it is only a small beginning and far from enough. More than 1.6 million people in Gaza are in critical need of humanitarian aid. Children, pregnant women and the elderly remain the most vulnerable. Nearly half of Gaza’s population are children,” says a joint statement by UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP and WHO on humanitarian supplies crossing into Gaza.
It says with so much civilian infrastructure in Gaza damaged or destroyed in nearly two weeks of constant bombings, including shelters, health facilities, water, sanitation, and electrical systems, time is running out before mortality rates could skyrocket due to disease outbreaks and lack of health-care capacity.
“We call for a humanitarian ceasefire, along with immediate, unrestricted humanitarian access throughout Gaza to allow humanitarian actors to reach civilians in need, save lives and prevent further human suffering. Flows of humanitarian aid must be at scale and sustained and allow all Gazans to preserve their dignity, the joint statement reads.
“We call for safe and sustained access to water, food, health – including sexual and reproductive health – and fuel, which is necessary to enable essential services. We call for the protection of all civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including health-care facilities. We call for the protection of humanitarian workers in Gaza who are risking their lives in the service of others. And we call for the utmost respect of international humanitarian law by all parties,” the joint statement reads.
