UN Geneva Press Briefing – 25 June 2024 (excerpt on Situation in Gaza by OCHA)

25 June 2024

Watch the full Press Briefing in English/French here:

UN Geneva Press Briefing, 25 June 2024

Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired a hybrid briefing, which was attended by spokespersons and representatives of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the International Trade Centre, and the Human Rights Council.

Situation in Gaza

Yasmina Guerda, Humanitarian Affairs Officer at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who had just returned from a three-month deployment to Gaza, said that the population in Gaza had lost nearly everything – their jobs, their roofs, their clothes, access to their bank accounts, and access to privacy. Ms. Guerda stressed that we should not speak about living conditions there because none of them had living conditions; what they had was survival conditions. 

Many people, if they were even warned before an attack began, had only 10-15 minutes to evacuate their building before it would be bombed. What to pack in such a situation was a dilemma because their home would likely become dust and there would be no return. Ms. Guerda mentioned a 19-year-old girl called Lamees who had kept repeating “My life should begin now, but it’s ending now”. For those who survived the bombing of their neighborhood by running away on time, it was only the beginning of the nightmare. In most humanitarian responses, displaced people could eventually find some sort of safety, but the past nine months had confirmed there was no safe corner in Gaza. Ms. Guerda stressed that delivering aid in Gaza was a daily puzzle, across the board. The ongoing fighting had killed over 200 aid workers in nine months. The public order and safety vacuum made humanitarian convoys vulnerable to looting. Humanitarians – Palestinians most notably – worked hard to deliver, but too often, no matter how hard they tried, they could not reach everyone. 

Civilians in Gaza were not weak people; they were far from helpless. Ms. Guerda recalled seeing families dig makeshift septic tanks with spoons, using toilets and pipes from destroyed buildings so they could have a little bit of privacy and hygiene near their tents. People still talked about their dreams to rebuild after the flattening of their bedrooms and kitchens. Hope still had a strong pulse in Gaza. What civilian women, children and men needed and desire above all, across the Strip, was a respite. They needed decision-makers to finally make a decisive gesture to put an end to the relentless way in which they are being knocked down after every attempt to get back up; and they needed the support of the rest of the world for that. 

Replying to questions from the media, Ms. Guerda said that the constantly shifting security situation made the already very difficult context even more challenging for aid delivery. The humanitarian space had been reduced dramatically since the Rafah invasion as more and more roads had become extremely dangerous due to the fighting and an increasing breakdown of public order. In southern parts of Gaza, humanitarian partners had set up a number of hunger-screening points in order to monitor starvation, but as the security situation was constantly changing, people kept moving and could not be followed up on. Getting fuel to access people for aid distribution had become a huge struggle, further hampering humanitarian efforts. 

On another question, Ms. Guerda spoke of having seen unaccompanied children but could not provide an estimate of their numbers. She stressed that the people of Gaza were resilient and capable to continue despite all the obstacles, to a degree she had not witnessed anywhere else.  Jens Laerke, also for OCHA, emphasized that OCHA was an independent, neutral, and impartial humanitarian organization which was conveying the truth as it saw it on the ground. There was no safe space in Gaza for anyone, stressed Ms. Guerda. Access to people in need should be facilitated, and aid workers should not be targeted, under international humanitarian law. Following the killing of the World Central Kitchen workers, humanitarians tried to re-emphasize that IHL had to prevail, while the deconfliction mechanism should only provide an additional layer of security for aid deliveries. Neither international humanitarian law nor the deconfliction mechanisms were being respected, she concluded. 

Alessandra Vellucci, for the United Nations Information Service (UNIS), informed that today at 1:00 pm, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), would hold a press conference to provide an update on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory. Mr. Lazzarini had briefed the Advisory Committee in Geneva the previous day. 

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