On 15-16 July, the United Nations convened a seminar in Geneva on
Assistance to the Palestinian People. The seminar brought governments, donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, Palestinian and other experts together to assess the current economic and humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Discussions focused on the role of the international community, donor strategies and aid coordination, and concluded with a UN appeal for increased donor assistance.
Since the outbreak of violence in September 2000 (the
Second Intifada) with regular clashes, closures and curfews, the economic and humanitarian situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has deteriorated dramatically. More than 60 percent of the population live under a poverty line of US$2 per day, and the number of poor have tripled from 650,000 on the eve of the Intifada to almost 2 million. Unemployment has risen to more than 50 percent. (For further details, see recent
World Bank Assessment).
Alongside the economic decline, the humanitarian needs in the territories have risen sharply. Coping mechanisms are exhausted, poor families are selling vital assets, e.g. livestock and land, to buy food and basic necessities, and many families find themselves in a downward spiral of indebtedness that leads to deeper poverty. Aid agencies have had to re-orient increasing resources from development towards relief.
Over the past many years, a wide range of aid and development organizations have provided humanitarian assistance and essential services to the Palestinian population. The largest UN operation in the region is
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) who provides education, healthcare, social services and emergency aid to Palestinian refugees both in the Palestinian Territory and in countries throughout the region. Other international organizations providing assistance to the Palestinian population include
OCHA,
UNDP,
UNICEF,
WFP,
WHO,
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the
Red Crescent,
Save the Children,
World Vision, and
Oxfam International. Also a wide range of Palestinian NGOs provide relief and development aid in the territories, e.g. the
Palestinian NGO Network - a Palestinian NGO umbrella organization comprising more than 90 Palestinian NGO member organizations working in different developmental sectoral fields.
However, aid organizations have been facing problems on several fronts during the past couple of years, one of which has been a lack of funding. When international attention gradually turned to Afghanistan and Iraq after September 11, 2001, donor assistance began decreasing. In the first half of 2003, UNRWA
only received a third of the total it had appealed for, and by the beginning of July 2003, no funds had been pledged or donated to support Palestinians until the end of the year. At the UN Seminar in Geneva, UNRWA told participants that without additional funds, it would have to cut food distribution in the territories by half, cut drastically back on employment programmes and cancel plans to rebuild almost 2000 housing units.
Only recently, funds for reconstruction and development are beginning to flow into the territories again, including donations from the
European Commission and the
US in July in support of the implementation of the
Road Map - the three-phased performance-based peace plan initiated by the Quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia) in autumn last year.
But aid agencies have also faced problems of an entirely different nature: the stifling regime of closures and curfews. Restrictions of movement of various kinds and degrees have been imposed on the territories since the situation started deteriorating in late September 2000, and have often prevented aid agencies from carrying out their work. In May, for instance, 18 UN, non-governmental and other organizations signed a
joint statement protesting increasing travel restrictions to and from Gaza that affected almost all international staff of UN agencies, NGOs and other humanitarian organizations.
With the implementation of the Road Map underway, it is hoped that conditions will gradually allow aid organizations to better perform their work in the territories. The Road Map includes a humanitarian component referred to as the Humanitarian Response that calls on Palestinians and Israelis to implement the recommendations of the
Bertini Report (an assessment of the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population conducted by former Executive Director of WFP Ms. Catherine Bertini in August 2002) to "improve humanitarian conditions, lifting curfews and easing restrictions on movement of persons and good, and allowing full, safe, and unfettered access of international and humanitarian personnel."
For more information on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory:
Important upcoming events:
- United Nations international meeting of civil society in support of the Palestinian people, 4 - 5 September 2003, New York
- International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November 2003.
- Conclusions of a food security and nutrition assessment recently carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by FAO in collaboration with WFP, expected to be published in autumn 2003
.
