UNRWA warns Gaza sanitation disaster ‘getting worse’
In a new alert, UNRWA Gaza’s refugee shelters have become targets for insects and rodents after more than 11 months of war – reflecting deep concerns among humanitarian workers that a lack of basic hygiene supplies leaves families unprotected from infectious diseases.
Echoing those warnings, leading human rights experts meeting at the United Nations in Geneva asserted that the right to clean water for Gaza’s 2.3 million people was being abused by Israel.
The Origin of Pain
“Water is the primary food we need…it is irreplaceable. But at the same time, if potability is not guaranteed, it becomes the world’s most devastating cause of disease and death,” said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.So in this case, this is clearly being used as a weapon in Gaza against [the] Palestinian population.“
Mr. Arrojo-Agudo, who reports to Human Rights Council as an independent rights expert, said that Gaza’s population currently lives on an average of 4.7 liters of water per person per day. – much lower than the United Nations World Health Organization’s recommended minimum of 15 liters in an emergency (WHO).
With the coastal aquifer being the only natural source of fresh water for the people of Gaza, “This huge population has been forced to pump three times the amount of water that the aquifer receives through natural recharge.”, leading to seawater pollution during the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the Special Rapporteur asserted.
“In addition, Israel blocks 70 percent of the materials needed to build and operate wastewater treatment plants as ‘dual-use’ materials, preventing proper wastewater treatment, leading to increasingly serious fecal contamination of groundwater,” Arrojo-Agudo stressed.
Priced
In one updateThe United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) says a 75-gram bar of soap costs $10 in Gaza, while shampoo, detergent and dishwashing liquid are no longer available on the market.
The shortage of these hygiene items “disproportionately affects children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems,” WHO said, stressing that handwashing with soap is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of diseases linked to poor sanitation, such as diarrhea, respiratory infections, scabies and other skin infections.
“It can protect around one in three children from diarrhoea and prevent bacteria from spreading to food, drinks and surfaces,” the UN health agency stressed, in support of its call to allow a minimum of five trucks a day from commercial suppliers carrying soap and basic hygiene items into Gaza, both south and north.
Meanwhile, leading independent human rights experts also speak on Monday that ‘There is really no room left’ for civil society activists to work safelyafter airstrikes and ground attacks by the Israeli military.
In recent months, Gaza’s oldest human rights organization, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, has seen several staff killed and its offices damaged beyond repair in operations by the Israeli Defense Forces, according to Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor and other experts reporting to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council in their independent capacity.
Ms Lawlor noted that two female Palestinian NGO lawyers were killed in February 2024 – Nour Abu al-Nour, who was killed along with her two-year-old daughter, her parents and four siblings in an airstrike on her home in Rafah – and Dana Yaghi, who was killed along with 37 family members in an airstrike on a home in Deir el-Balah.
In a statement, Ms Lawlor said it was “a terrible tragedy that justice for these two women human rights defenders, their family members and their children seems so far away” while human rights defenders who have worked hard to maintain hope for justice… are being victimised.
