UN relief chief calls Gaza war a ‘betrayal of humanity’

GENEVA: United Nations (UN) humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has asserted that Israel’s war on Gaza has turned into a “betrayal of humanity”.

In a statement on the eve of the six-month anniversANN(Asian News Network) of the war, Martin Griffiths, the outgoing under-secretANN(Asian News Network)-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, called for a “collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity.”

“Each day, this war claims more civilian victims,” said Griffiths, who will leave his post at the end of June due to health reasons.

The destruction wrought across the Gaza Strip by Israel since Oct 7 makes for grim reading – over 33,000 people killed and, according to the World Bank, over one million Palestinians are without homes, close to 90 per cent of health facilities have been damaged or wrecked and schools have been destroyed or turned into shelters for the newly homeless.

“Rarely has there been such global outrage at the toll of the conflict with seemingly so little done to end it and instead so much impunity”, Griffiths said.

He said the grim milestone should not be just a moment of remembrance and mourning, “it must also spur a collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity.”

It still unclear how much more destruction and death Gaza will endure before peace settles across the troubled enclave, nor what type of society will emerge from the conflict, but six months after hostilities started UN agencies are already strategizing for the future, however uncertain.

Gaza has witnessed an almost complete destruction of economic activity in all sectors. That the damning analysis of Aya Jaafar, an economist at the UN International Labour Organization (ILO).

The ILO estimates that more than 200,000 jobs have been lost in Gaza, some 90 per cent of the pre-conflict workforce.

The UN agency further calculates that income losses there have reached $4.1 million per day, which equates to an 80 per cent decrease in the enclave GDP (the amount of money earned from the sale of all goods and services). This includes Palestinians who received salaries for work carried out in Israel but who are now unemployed in Gaza.

Construction has typically been one of the most important industries in Gaza, but according to the ILO, activity in the sector is down some 96 per cent. Other key productive areas, including agriculture and the industrial and services sector, have also all but ceased.

The few businesses that are still operating are generally small-scale local enterprises, including bakeries, other food-related businesses and some pharmacies.

The ILO estimates that perhaps 25 per cent of the people killed in Gaza have been men of working age – generally, women do not work. Ms. Jaafar said the loss of these breadwinners will mean that families will face some economic hardships after the war ends.

This could mean more children in a future Gazan labour market raising concerns about exploitative child labour.

In the immediate post-war situation, some emergency employment programmes will be critical to provide incomes to workers who have lost their jobs as they seek to support their families, Ms Jaafar said.

It is expected that micro and small enterprises will need emergency grants and wage subsidies as part of the process of restoring activity and to facilitate local economic recovery. Extensive skills development and vocational training will also be required.