UNITED NATIONS, Jan 27 (APP): The fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is making a difference to the lives of over a million children, and improving overall access to food – but more aid still needs to enter, according to senior officials from two UN agencies.<\/p>\n
The officials from the UN Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP), speaking on Monday to journalists in New York following a week-long visit to the enclave and the occupied West Bank said the two agencies have brought more than 10,000 trucks of aid into Gaza since the 10 October truce between Israel and Hamas, representing some 80 per cent of all humanitarian cargo.<\/p>\n
Three months later, \u201cthe food security situation has improved and famine has been reversed,\u201d said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations.<\/p>\n
Carl Skau, WFP Deputy Executive Director, added that most families he met \u201cwere eating at least once a day\u201d \u2013 sometimes twice.<\/p>\n
Commercial goods have reappeared in Gaza\u2019s markets, including vegetables, fruits, chicken and eggs. Recreational kits to help children heal from the stress and trauma of two years of war are now in their hands.<\/p>\n
UNICEF and partners have provided more than 1.6 million people with clean drinking water and distributed blankets and winter clothes to 700,000. They have also restored essential life-saving paediatric intensive care services at embattled Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.<\/p>\n
The second round of a Gaza-wide \u201ccatch-up campaign\u201d for routine childhood vaccinations is currently underway, while another 72 UNICEF-supported nutrition facilities have been established, bringing the total to 196.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese gains matter,\u201d said Chaiban. \u201cThey show what is possible when the fighting pauses, political commitments are sustained and humanitarian access opens.\u201d<\/p>\n
WFP has also scaled up massively over the past 100 days, said Skau, speaking from Rome. Teams have reached more than a million people every month with full rations for the first time since the war began.<\/p>\n
They are \u201cserving 400,000 hot meals every day and delivering school snacks to some 230,000 children in 250 temporary learning centres,\u201d in addition to operating hundreds of distribution points and some 20 warehouses.<\/p>\n
Other humanitarian organizations are bringing in tents, blankets, mattresses and other essentials thanks to WFP\u2019s shared logistics services.<\/p>\n
The agency is also helping to facilitate more regular aid convoys and is expanding common storage facilities so that more aid can be positioned closer to the population. It has also ramped up cash support to roughly 60,000 households.<\/p>\n
Although more aid is entering Gaza, quantities are not yet sufficient to meet the immense needs. Furthermore, \u201cthe situation also remains extremely precarious and deadly for many children,\u201d said Chaiban.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than 100 children have been reported killed in Gaza since the ceasefire of early October. Despite the progress with food security,100,000 children remain acutely malnourished and require long term care. 1.3 million people, many of them children, are in urgent need of proper shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Families are shivering in fabric tents and bombed-out buildings amid freezing temperatures that have killed at least 10 children this winter season.<\/p>\n
Sklau met a young woman with a 10-day-old baby who \u201cwas sitting on a wet mattress in this cold tent on the beach,\u201d describing their plight as \u201cjust absolutely brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet hope blossoms in the Gaza Strip. UNICEF and partners are supporting over 250,000 children to resume learning \u2013 a critical element to mental health and psychosocial support for more than 700,000 students who have been out of school for two years.<\/p>\n
Skau recalled a conversation with young girls at a temporary learning space who \u201cwere happy to be back learning and eating more regularly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could see a future again as nurses or engineers or restaurant owners, and they seemed impressively confident and determined to build a future for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Humanitarians need essential items \u2013 such as water and sanitation provision, as well as educational supplies \u2013 to be allowed to enter Gaza which can help jump start recovery and reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Chaiban said WFP and UNICEF are ready to scale up operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe children of Gaza and the State of Palestine including the West Bank, which is also experiencing a wave of violence do not need sympathy. They need decisions now that give them warmth, safety, food, education, and a future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an opportunity, a window, to change the trajectory for these children. We can\u2019t waste it.\u201d<\/p>\n
APP\/ift<\/p>\n