How has the war in Gaza affected UNRWA’s ability to support Palestinians?

Emergency relief: Drastically hit

Before the war:

• Over one million Palestine refugees were estimated to be living in absolute poverty, which means they cannot meet their most basic food needs.
• Those living in Gaza have been struggling to cope with life under Israel’s 15-year air, land and sea blockade.
• To alleviate the conditions, UNRWA has assisted with food and medical assistance, and cash-based transfers.

Since the war:

• UNRWA’s ability to provide any kind of aid has been drastically hit. This is not due to a lack of available aid, but rather access restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities, which prevent UNRWA from distributing supplies.
• The head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, announced in October of this year that some 30 humanitarian trucks were getting into Gaza every day – just six per cent of the amount of commercial and humanitarian supplies allowed in before the war.
• According to the UN office for humanitarian affairs, OCHA, nearly half the population lacks the minimum 15 litres of water per person per day for drinking, cooking and hygiene.

Healthcare: Hanging by a thread

Before the war:

• UNRWA has been delivering comprehensive primary healthcare to Palestine refugees for over 60 years.
• 22 healthcare centres were in Gaza, with clinic and laboratory facilities, personalised maternal health care and family planning services.
• Psychosocial counsellors were in several Gazan schools and special education needs clinics in a number of health centres to help children to cope with anxiety, distress and depression.

Since the war:

• Hospitals have, on several occasions since 7 October, been targeted by the Israeli military. In recent days, the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has become a “besieged war zone”, in the words of Adele Khodr, a senior UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official. “Vulnerable newborns and sick and wounded children in need of intensive care are being killed in tents, in incubators and in the arms of their parents,” she said on Tuesday. “That this hasn’t galvanised enough political will to end the war represents a fundamental crisis of our humanity.”
• The agency has been a key part of an inter-agency polio vaccination campaign, inoculating around 560,000 children across the Strip during the first round, and around 545,000 during the second round.
• Thousands remain out of reach, though, and Israel’s constant displacement orders and bombings have presented serious delays and obstacles.
• UNRWA has, nevertheless, been able to keep eight of its health centres operational, and despite the extremely hazardous conditions in which they have to operate – there have been over 500 attacks on health workers, patients, hospitals and other medical infrastructure – UNRWA’s medical teams still managed to provide around 6.2 million primary healthcare consultations over the last year, up from almost 2.6 million the year before.

Education: A year lost

Before the war:

• The UNRWA education programme in Gaza was the largest of those run by the agency, with 284 schools operating in 183 education premises in the Strip, staffed by more than 10,500 education personnel, serving around 300,000 registered students.
• Although UNRWA has no mandate to alter curricula or textbooks (these are a matter of national sovereignty), the agency is committed to ensuring that what is being taught in the schools it runs adheres to UN values and principles.

Since the war:

• UNRWA considers that children in the Strip have no safe space to learn but, in spite of the dangers, the agency remains committed to providing educational opportunities, and in August, launched a programme to provide “learning spaces” to provide basic support, including recreational and learning activities. Around 9,500 children, 60 per cent of them girls, have benefited these initiatives in 36 dedicated shelters across Gaza.
• Nearly 85 per cent of the agency’s schools have been hit or damaged during the war, some several times. Some have been flattened, and many have been severely damaged. Most were being used as shelters for displaced people, among them many children, when they were hit.
• As a result, children in Gaza only completed six weeks of the 38-week long 2023-2024 school year. They have essentially lost a year of education.

Economic development: ‘Back to 1955 levels’

Before the war:

• Over several years, UNRWA has run programmes to boost economic development by supporting entrepreneurs, helping women to enter the workforce and empowering people with disabilities.
• The agency’s department of microfinance gives poor or marginalised people the ability to build sustainable ways of generating income, extending credit to those who would otherwise not have access to loans.
• In 2020, UNRWA set up the IT Service Centre to address unemployment, help Palestine refugees access opportunities in the digital sector and kickstart their careers.

Since the war:

• These and other initiatives have been badly affected by the war in Gaza. According to a UN report released in late October, economic development in Gaza and the West Bank has been set back by almost 70 years (equivalent to June 1955 levels).
• “Our assessments serve to sound the alarm over the millions of lives that are being shattered and the decades of development efforts that are being wiped out,” declared Rola Dashti, Executive Director of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA).

Refugee camps: Under attack

Before the war:

• UNRWA programmes designed to improve the living conditions of Palestine refugees have existed for many years, leading to the construction of hundreds of housing units as well as the development of sewage and drainage facilities.

Since the war:

• Over the past year, military operations, fighting and escalating violence have damaged or destroyed an estimated 66 per cent of all buildings in Gaza and devastated densely populated refugee camps. A total of 227,591 housing units have been affected, according to UN figures.
• Jabalia refugee camp, for example, has been hit several times by strikes. In June, UNRWA reported “horrific” scenes of devastation in the camp, and in November of this year, over 50 children were reportedly killed in strikes that levelled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people.
• Sewage and waste systems are at a breaking point. Speaking during a visit to Gaza City on 5 November, Muhannad Hadi, the UN Resident Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, described seeing hundreds of people with no access to toilets and streets covered in garbage and sewage.