Corinne Fleischer, World Food Programme Director for the three regions briefed reporters about her recent visits to the Gaza Strip and Ukraine.
An increase in the number of evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military, coupled with a “massive deterioration” in security, meant the UN agency was able to reach fewer people in Gaza in August, although it did not provide figures.
These conditions also hamper efforts to prevent famine in the enclave.
Families are struggling to keep their heads above water
Ms Fleischer said people in the Middle East have had no rest over the past 13 years due to the Arab Spring, the ongoing refugee crisis, the near-economic collapse of some countries and the war in Ukraine, which continues to have a major impact on food inflation.
“And Now of course we are also preparing for a regional war, and this has to stop because families really can’t cope anymore“, she said.
‘No more empty space’
The WFP official traveled to Gaza in late July and spent a week in the Strip, where some two million Palestinians are crammed into an ever-shrinking space. She saw people fleeing in the wake of Israeli evacuation orders.
“There is simply no empty space left in Gaza,” she said, noting that makeshift camps have been piled up on the beach right up to the shoreline, that the roads are jammed with people, while the shelters run by the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWAare packed.
She visited a UNRWA facility, which houses some 13,000 people and where “you could barely walk through.”
©WFP
A bakery in Gaza supported by the WFP reopened in April after 170 days of closure following deliveries of fuel and flour.
Food aid and support to bakeries
Despite the enormous challenges, WFP is reaching more than one million people in Gaza and the West Bank every month with food assistance, bread and nutrition interventions, she said.
In addition, the UN agency is also using “every emergency dollar we invest in this operation” to help restore private sector supply chains by supporting local bakeries, which have reopened thanks to supplies of wheat flour, fuel and yeast.
WFP also helps to maintain trade during the conflict.
“We are channeling our in-kind aid to the stores we worked with before, so they can keep their people paid and keep the stores open, so when the markets open again, they are there,” she said.
Endless hours of waiting
However, she reported that humanitarian operations are becoming increasingly difficult to carry out in Gaza, with the journey from Deir Al-Balah in the central area to the northern border crossing now taking eight hours instead of the usual 40 minutes.
Aid workers spend “endless hours” waiting for movement permits, then have to wait again at guard posts and checkpointsThe roads are already destroyed and the coming winter will make them even more impassable.
© UNRWA
Gaza residents are complying with evacuation orders from Israeli authorities.
Impact of evacuation orders
Ms Fleischer said that since she left Gaza, humanitarian organisations have faced more Israeli evacuation orders and a dramatic deterioration in the security situation, which has affected their operations.
“WFP lost access to its third warehouse and last operational warehouse in Gaza in the Central Area due to an evacuation order. We lost five WFP-supported community kitchens that had to be evacuated, and we lost almost 20 distribution points in the Strip,” she said.
“Although we are managing to bring in food, more or less, it is not enough, but we cannot distribute it at the moment. So, we reached fewer people last month than we normally do.”
The evacuation orders also forced WFP to leave its main operational centre in Gaza at short notice, the third time since the conflict began.
Restore law and order
Ms Fleischer said the increased violence was “choking our efforts to prevent famine in Gaza”, where half a million people are living in catastrophic and famine-like conditions.
She called for more border crossings into the enclave, streamlined operations to allow humanitarian organizations to carry out their tasks and the restoration of law and order so they can safely reach people in need.
“And we also need money to come back to Gaza so that people can go shopping in the stores again,” she said.
© WFP/Niema Abdelmageed
Agriculture has been severely disrupted by the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Exhaustion and displacement in Ukraine
Moving on to Ukraine, Ms Fleischer reported on her visit to Sumy province two weeks ago, where the situation “is also dramatic”.
She met people whose homes had been destroyed ‘and you could feel their exhaustion after so much displacement’.
WFP left Ukraine six years ago, but returned after the large-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Since then, teams have reached around two million people, mainly in frontline areas, with cash and food.
Grain export, pension support
Here again, The UN agency invests “every dollar” in strengthening local capacitieswhich brings in more than $1.2 billion to the economy, mainly through purchasing food it uses in Ukraine from local producers.
WFP also exported one million tonnes of food to countries in need under the “Grains from Ukraine” humanitarian initiative.
“We work very closely with the government to supplement their social protection system,” she added. “So, we are topping up pensions, and we are topping up disability pensions, instead of giving them a full pension.”
WFP is also bringing food to the frontlines, where supply chains have been destroyed, and helping to rebuild these vital networks.
This includes supporting bakeries and carrying out a mine clearance project, together with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (Food and Commodities Authority), allowing some 5,000 small-scale farmers to return to their fields.
