ROME, Aug 15 (IPS) – Corinne Fleischer, WFP regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, described Gaza as “a terrible situation that is getting worse”. Over the past two weeks, 21 food distribution points of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) have been closed under evacuation orders.
“UNRWA says 86% of the Strip is under evacuation orders,” she says during a video call from her office in Cairo. Fleischer visited the enclave in July. “Two million people are crammed into 14% of the area.”
Despite enormous challenges, WFP continues to help Gazans
With ongoing evacuation orders forcing WFP to vacate food distribution sites, it is becoming difficult to accurately target the most vulnerable groups. We provide ready-to-eat meals, hot meals and nutritional support to breastfeeding women and young children.
“We support partners in almost 80 kitchens, where they cook, package and distribute meals to people in camps,” Fleischer explains. She visited Gaza last December. “Back then, it was more about how do we get food in – and that’s still the case,” she says. “Now we at least have a dedicated WFP operation on the ground.” Her greatest achievement? “We helped prevent a large-scale famine,” she says.
There are currently almost 500,000 people present IPC5/Catastrophethe highest level of food insecurity on the global standard for measuring food insecurity – down from 1.1 million people earlier this year.
Fleischer is keen to emphasise the positive impact of humanitarian supplies that make it. “Right now, we’re not bringing in enough food into Gaza,” she says. “We’re not bringing in what we’re planning for the month because we don’t have enough crossings open. We need all the crossings open and at full capacity.”
“Operations are super complicated,” Fleischer says. “We’re working in a war zone. Roads are destroyed. We wait hours at checkpoints for the green light to leave.”
WFP, she stresses, is also working to support the broader humanitarian community. “We lead the Logistics Cluster (the interagency coordination mechanism) and support partners to bring their supplies through the Jordan corridor. We receive their supplies in the north at the Zikim crossing. We assist them in Kerem Shalom. So of course we also help with fuel deliveries.”
Nowhere is safe in Gaza
“Gaza residents can’t get out, and they’re asking for it,” Fleischer said. “They’re exhausted. There’s no space — one makeshift tent after another, all the way to the sea. The streets are teeming with people.” Meanwhile, collapsed sewage systems, lack of water and waste management are allowing diseases like Hepatitis A, which is spreading among children, to proliferate.
Children eat fortified cookies provided by WFP at a makeshift camp in southern Gaza.
“We are lucky that nothing happened to our wonderful staff – over 200 UNRWA staff have been killed,” she says. “That is unacceptable.” She adds: “We have great security officers who advise management on what risks to avoid so that we can stay safe and do our work and families can safely access our aid. But the risks are high. Very high. We have bullets near our convoys. We are there to repair roads. We are there to drive our trucks. We are there to reach people. And it is very dangerous.”
On the road to recovery, the private sector has a role to play, says Fleischer – take the reopening of shops. “If you think about a lifeline, hope or a sense of normalcy, it’s definitely when basic bread is back on the market,” she says of bakeries that have reopened with WFP support. “Bakers need wheat flour, they need yeast, they need diesel – and that’s where we come in.”
High prices make basic food items out of reach for most Gazans
In southern Gaza, “basic food items are slowly coming back to the food markets. You can actually find fruits and vegetables, but because the prices are high, they remain out of reach for most,” she says. “And anyway, people have no money. There are no jobs. Even our own staff say, ‘We have a salary, but we can’t get money.’”
Fleischer would like to see humanitarian efforts reach a point where people “stop eating the things they’ve been eating for the last nine months” – to diversify a diet that relies heavily on canned food (provided by WFP) and whatever else people can get their hands on.
“I have never seen such a level of destruction.”
Fleischer’s greatest fear for Gaza is “that it will never end. That we will continue to have less and less space for the people who already have nowhere to go. Even if they were to move back to the north, where would they go?”
“Everything has been flattened. There are no houses, it’s all destroyed. We need a long ceasefire that leads to peace, so that we can operate.”
Fleischer, who has served with WFP in Syria and the Darfur region of Sudan, added: “I have never seen this level of destruction. Hospitals and clinics have been destroyed, food processing plants have been destroyed. Everything has been destroyed.”
Still, “There’s this never-give-up attitude from the people, from the families that we serve,” she says. “I can’t believe that kids still run up to you and laugh with you. They probably see in us the hope that there’s an end to all of this — a sign that they’re not forgotten.”
This story originally appeared on August 8, 2024 in WFP’s Stories and was written by WFP’s editorial team.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
