The United Nations said Tuesday that for the previous 66 days, humanitarian supplies have been mostly denied to North Gaza, where Israel began a ground attack on October 6. According to the international organization, this has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without access to electricity, food, water, or medical care. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, Israel has maintained its siege on Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya in the north, with the Palestinians residing there mainly being denied aid. It said that over 5,500 individuals had recently been forcibly moved from three Beit Lahiya schools to Gaza City.
North Gaza faces an aid crisis
The fact that there are currently just four U.N.-supported bakeries in the Gaza Strip, all of them in Gaza City, exacerbates the food situation. After briefing the U.N. Security Council behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon, Sigrid Kaag, the senior U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters that the situation facing civilians attempting to survive in Gaza is “utterly devastating.” She cited the collapse of law and order, the theft that has made matters worse, and the inability of the United Nations and several aid agencies to provide food and other necessities to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need. Kaag stated that she and other U.N. representatives are constantly requesting that Israel permit convoys to enter North Gaza and other areas, permit commercial products to enter, reopen the Rafah gate from Egypt in the south, and authorize dual-use items. A request for comment from Israel’s U.N. mission was not immediately answered. She noted that although the U.N. has set up the logistics for an operation throughout Gaza, humanitarians’ political will cannot be replaced.
Humanitarian aid stalled
“It is in member states,” Kaag stated. She also asked members of the Security Council and the international community at large to push for the political will to address Gaza’s deteriorating humanitarian situation. The World Bank predicted on Wednesday that Myanmar’s GDP would shrink this year due to the devastating effects of flooding and fighting, almost four years after the military overthrew the country’s elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. The bank said in an update released on Wednesday that extensive flooding from strong monsoon rains and a typhoon that swept through the nation in September had damaged around a fifth of all built structures and a tenth of Myanmar’s roadways. According to the estimate, around 2 million individuals were left homeless.
UN reports Gaza aid blockade
Meanwhile, farming and manufacturing are being disrupted in various regions of the country by ?ongoing, intense combat between the military and opposition forces. It stated that
“armed conflict is still occurring at a high level and intensity, seriously impacting lives and livelihoods, upsetting supply chains and production, and increasing uncertainty regarding the economic outlook.”
According to the estimate, ?GDP will probably shrink by 1% annually over the April–March fiscal year. In favor of democracy Following the overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government by generals in early 2021, the Myanmar army has been engaged in conflict with insurgents and ethnic minority armed forces vying for autonomy. According to the report, over half of the nation’s townships are enmeshed in war, major project building has been postponed, and the United Nations estimates that 3.5 million people, or around 6% of the population, have been displaced from their homes. The Southeast Asian country is in danger, with conflict intensifying, criminal networks “out of control,” and human misery reaching previously unheard-of heights, according to a recent warning from the U.N. special envoy for Myanmar.
Limited aid access in Gaza
Former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop cautioned that Myanmar could end up becoming a “forgotten crisis.” The World Bank research stated that in addition to the problems, the conflict’s disruptions have contributed to the depreciation of Myanmar’s currency, the kyat, which in the first eight months of this year lost 40% of its value about the dollar in informal trade. Food costs rose more than 60% between April and September, while that contributed to inflation reaching over 25%, according to the report. International visitor arrivals are roughly one-fifth of what they were before ?the military takeover and the COVID-19 pandemic’s double shocks, and manufacturing has also suffered as a result of production disruptions caused by power outages.
