The humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached a “lethal low” as the Israeli military orders the relocation of over 1.1 million people from the northern region of Wadi Gaza to the southern area, within a 24-hour deadline. This announcement, made by UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, has raised concerns about devastating consequences for the already vulnerable population. The United Nations (UN) and its agencies have called for the order to be rescinded, emphasizing the impossibility of such a movement and the dire humanitarian repercussions it would entail.

‘Death sentence’ for many

UN representatives in Gaza have described the relocation order as a “death sentence” for many affected individuals. The World Health Organization (WHO) has joined the call for Israel to retract the order, highlighting the impossibility of evacuating vulnerable hospital patients from the north of Gaza. The UN has reiterated its appeals for the immediate release of hostages held in Gaza and for the protection of civilians, as well as urgent aid access to the sealed-off enclave.

‘Pushing people into the abyss’

UN humanitarians have also expressed concern about the worsening situation in Gaza and the potential loss of civilian lives. The head of the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned that the relocation order would lead to unprecedented levels of misery and further push people in Gaza into an abyss. The UNRWA stated that Gaza is on the brink of collapse, emphasizing the need for all parties to uphold the laws of war.

Aid ‘locked out’

The UN has urgently requested humanitarian access to Gaza, as supplies are quickly depleting. The situation has reached a critical point, with UN officials stating that they are effectively locked out of Gaza. On Thursday, the UN launched a flash appeal for $294 million to address the urgent needs of 1.26 million people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The immediate priority is to de-escalate the conflict and alleviate the suffering of civilians.

Health system at ‘breaking point’

The health system in Gaza is at a breaking point, with hospitals exceeding their capacities and struggling to provide adequate care. The World Health Organization has reported that six out of the seven main hospitals in Gaza are only partially functioning. Moving critically injured patients and those depending on life support would be a death sentence, and health workers are facing a difficult choice of whom to save in a dire situation that is overwhelming the already strained healthcare system. There have also been numerous attacks on healthcare facilities and personnel, further exacerbating the crisis.

Release hostages, protect civilians

The UN Human Rights Office insists that civilians must never be used as bargaining chips and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of hostages. Both Palestinian armed groups and Israel are urged to respect international humanitarian law and halt attacks against civilians. The rise in hate speech, including anti-Semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric, is also a cause for concern, and leaders are called upon to stem such hate speech and incitements to violence.

Rise in hate speech

The situation in Gaza has sparked strong emotions worldwide, leading to a proliferation of hate speech and incitement to violence in many countries. The UN rights chief deplores this rise in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate speech and calls on leaders to unite against it. In the face of this desperate situation, the international community must show solidarity and advocate for the protection of all civilians, regardless of their background.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet in New York to discuss the situation in Gaza, highlighting the urgency of the crisis and the need for a coordinated international response.

Sources: UN Note to Correspondents, UN News

What does it take to get food, medicine, emergency education, and shelter to record numbers of people in some of the most dangerous places on Earth? The UN does this around the world, including in Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine, and the occupied Palestinian territory.

One in every 33 people (that’s 242 million people) on the planet needed humanitarian assistance in 2022, and most of that aid was coordinated through the UN.

Coordination: Crisis HQ

This week, as the Israel-Palestine crisis erupted on 7 October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York swiftly mobilized. As with all UN emergency responses, the agency facilitates efforts to deliver life-saving aid to those in need.

Taking the lead in providing relief on the ground, including in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Gaza this week, are many UN acronyms commonly identified with emergency aid worldwide, including the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), and other such specialized agencies as those focused on refugees (UNHCR) and children (UNICEF).

A crisis team at UN Headquarters in New York works around the clock to monitor hotspots across the world. To support these efforts, the UN Department of Global Communications (DGC) amplifies emergency needs and funding appeals globally online and on social media.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres and his special envoys engage key players in each conflict to try to find a peaceful solution. In the meantime, the UN chief and staff monitor situations on the ground, inform the media of updates, and discuss with national authorities the best, safest ways to get aid to communities in crisis.

Aid hubs: World’s largest humanitarian warehouse

Planning is essential; much of the aid distributed to people in need across the world comes from storage facilities in Denmark, where UNICEF operates its Global Supply and Logistics Hub in Copenhagen.

Spanning more than 20,000 square metres, it is the largest humanitarian warehouse in the world.

A donation from Denmark, it can store up to 36,000 pallets of supplies, which are moved around by automated robot cranes.

Additional hubs are located worldwide, including in China, Italy, Panama, and the United Arab Emirates.

Walking the talk

Funding for these operations comes from nations around the world, which also donate year-round to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). Managed by OCHA, the fund has to date provided more than $6 billion in life-saving assistance in more than 100 countries and territories.

The UN humanitarian affairs office also operates country-based funds (CBPF), managed by the UN, which makes money available to those working on the ground, including its own entities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Organizations.

OCHA allocated a record $1.2 billion through CBPF in 2022, helping partners to address the humanitarian needs of about 47 million people caught in crises.

Most recently, the UN agency released $5 million early this week to help people sheltering in Gaza and the West Bank.

How aid gets there

Boats, trucks, planes, and even drones help the UN get aid to people in need. If you’ve ever wondered just how aid supplies and relief workers themselves get to crisis-torn countries where they are needed most, it’s the UN Humanitarian Air Service that steps in when no other means of reaching isolated communities are available.

Known by its acronym, UNHAS, the service was set up in 2003, is managed by WFP, and for the past two decades has been offering safe, reliable, cost-efficient, and effective passenger and light cargo transport for the wider humanitarian community to and from areas of crisis and intervention.

UNHAS has a fleet of more than 90 aircraft, including helicopters, that transports on average more than 33,000 passengers and about 300 metric tonnes of light cargo per month to 310 regular destinations.

Drones have been also been used to reach hard-to-access areas to deliver vaccines, medicines, diagnostic samples, blood products, and other commodities, according to UNICEF, which launched the first ever humanitarian drone corridor in Africa in 2016.

Delivery routes are critical, so the UN discusses transport agreements among nations during conflicts. That included aid in Syria as well as the Black Sea Initiative, agreed by Russia, Türkiye, and Ukraine, which for one year brought more than 32 tonnes of food stuffs to 45 countries on three continents.

Safe passages: On the ground

The UN and its agencies on the ground routinely request from national authorities the establishment of humanitarian corridors, or safe, unimpeded access for aid workers and deliveries to safely reach those who need help the most. 

At the national level, when emergencies occur, the UN Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator manages relief efforts, working hand-in-hand with local authorities.

But, it is UN staff, predominantly national staff with their local knowledge and contacts, that enable much of the relief work and often face the biggest risks, including those employed by the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

A dozen UN agencies and 17,000 staff members, mostly Palestine refugees, work in Gaza and the West Bank, home to more than two million people.

Despite falling rockets and closed borders, they continued to provide assistance in Gaza on Thursday, five days after the crisis began, even as the UN announced that 12 of its staff members had been killed by airstrikes.

“The humanitarian society responds despite the fact that the resources available in Gaza are not enough,” OCHA staff member Hamada El Bayari told UN News.

“There has been an almost complete stop of the supply chain, and resources have not for the last couple of days been authorized to come to Gaza,” he said. “It’s becoming, over the past days, extremely challenging for the humanitarian workers to the put their feet where the impact is.”

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The World must act to protect persons with disabilities from the damaging of natural disaster, more than 5,000 victims on Afghan quake, global aid funding off track

The world must act on “unacceptable failures” to protect persons with disabilities from the damaging impact of living through a natural disaster, the UN office dealing with disaster risk said on Thursday.

Persons with disabilities face a “shocking lack of support” with no progress in the last decade, despite a huge increase in climate disasters worldwide, the new UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) report states, and that lack of progress could be a violation of international law.

Persons with disabilities make up 16 per cent of the world’s population and suffer an overall death rate due to disasters that is two to four times higher than the general population.

Comprehensive survey

The survey captured over 6,000 responses from 132 countries to evaluate progress on government policies that should be offering protection.

An initial survey focused on disability was conducted in 2013 and comes ahead of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction marked on Friday, on the theme of fighting inequality. 

The new survey found limited progress on disability inclusion over the past ten years, with no significant advances in any region.

Specifically, 84 per cent of respondents in 2023 reported not having a personal preparedness plan in case of a disaster, such as knowing evacuation routes, available shelters and stocking up on emergency supplies.

In 2013, this figure was 71 per cent.

Notably, the 2023 findings show that if sufficient early warning is provided, 39 per cent of respondents reported they would have no difficulty evacuating, compared to 26 per cent, if there was no warning.

Afghan quake: More than 5,000 victims reached, WHO reports

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has reached 5,625 of the survivors most impacted by the earthquakes that struck the Herat region of Afghanistan over the weekend and again on Wednesday.

In an update, the health agency reported that just over 4,000 have received primary healthcare including mental health support, and over 1,000 were helped with trauma and rehab services.

Latest reports estimate that just over 11,000 people – some 1,835 families – have been impacted overall.

As of Wednesday night, WHO reported damage to 21 health facilities across 10 different districts, more than half of the destruction occurred as a result of the fresh earthquake and aftershocks that day.

A 650-bed regional hospital in Herat, received many of the injured, with 141 patients transferred there, including two in a critical condition, said WHO. 

As of 10 October, the death toll stood at 1,294, with nearly 1,700 injured. 

Global funding for aid off-track: OCHA

Humanitarians face a funding shortfall of $37 billion to respond to emergencies which affect millions of people in need around the world.

That’s the message from UN humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA), which said on Thursday that out of the more than $55 billion required to assist 248 million people this year, donors have provided just under a third of that as of the end of September – that’s even less than this time last year.

OCHA said the monthly decrease of global humanitarian funding is “of great concern”.

The humanitarian response plans for the Central African Republic and Somalia have seen the sharpest funding shortfalls compared to last year, by as much as 33 per cent less in the case of Somalia.

Funding for eight other humanitarian emergencies in Afghanistan, Chad, Colombia, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mozambique, Syria and Venezuela has dropped by more than 10 per cent.

Gaza is on the brink of running out of food, water, electricity and critical supplies, UN humanitarians warned on Thursday.

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