WFP Appeals For Rapid Expansion Of Humanitarian Access To Gaza

Main Category: Aid / Disasters
Article Date: 09 Jan 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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The Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP),  Josette Sheeran, expressed deepening concern about the severe breakdown  of  food supplies and distributions in Gaza, and said the agency would scale up its operations to respond to urgent needs.

WFP  plans to broaden its reach to provide food assistance to up to 360,000 of  the non-refugee population in Gaza, while the United Nations Relief and Works  Agency  (UNRWA)  will  meet  food  requirements  among  the  refugee population that numbers 1.1 million people.

"The  situation  in  Gaza  is  dire with at least 80 per cent of the people needing  urgent  food  assistance,"  Sheeran said at Rafah, on the Egyptian border  with  Gaza,  where  she  had  travelled  to  hear at first hand the humanitarian challenges on the ground.

Sheeran  has  despatched a senior WFP team to Jerusalem to meet the Israeli authorities  and  urge  them  to grant freer humanitarian access to Gaza so that WFP can respond to the immediate food needs.

"It's  critical  that  WFP  and  all  humanitarian  workers  have  free and unfettered  access  to  the people of Gaza at this difficult time," Sheeran said,   adding  that  food  supplies  were  waiting  in  warehouses  to  be distributed to the hungry.

WFP  staff  in  Gaza  have  continued working to reach the hungry among the non-refugee  population throughout the latest upsurge in fighting.  Despite ongoing insecurity, the agency has reached more than 70,000 people over the past  two  weeks,  carrying  out  food  distributions  during pauses in the conflict,  delivering  urgently  needed  food  supplies  to  hospitals, and providing wheat flour to bakeries that remain open.

Civilians  are finding it increasingly difficult to find food in Gaza, with few  commodities  available on local markets and many people too frightened to  leave  their  homes.   Bakeries have also been running out of the wheat flour needed to produce bread - the staple food for people living in Gaza - and flour mills have run out of wheat grain.

WFP  has  food  stocks of 3,500 metric tons located in warehouses in Gaza - enough  to  feed  the new caseload of up to 360,000 for around three weeks. But  WFP's  ability to distribute food assistance has been severely limited by  the high levels of insecurity.  Many truck drivers, and fork-lift truck operators  have  been  unwilling to work due to concerns about their safety and this has severely hampered the agency's ability to get food to where it is needed most.

130  trucks  carrying  around  4,000  metric  tons of WFP food are ready to deliver  into  Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing point, but due to the insecurity,  a  limited capacity to move these supplies on the Gaza side of the  border  has  meant  that  only  a  restricted  amount of food has gone through.

WFP  is calling for all crossing points into the Gaza Strip to be opened to facilitate  the  flow of food assistance, and is appealing especially for a conveyor  belt  at  Karni crossing to be re-started as this helps to reduce the time taken to deliver food supplies across the border into Gaza.

WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency and the UN's frontline agency for hunger solutions. In 2009, WFP aims to feed around 100 million people in 77 countries.

WFP

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