humanitarian, palestine

New report highlights continuing aid challenges in Gaza and the West Bank amid growing safety risks

September 10, 2024

The latest Humanitarian Snapshot Report from NGOs operating in Gaza, including ActionAid, has revealed the safety risks and huge challenges in delivering aid faced by humanitarian workers in Gaza over the last two weeks as the Polio vaccination campaign gets underway.

ActionAid Ireland CEO, Karol Balfe, described the overall humanitarian situation as devastating. Ms Balfe said: “Delivering aid is still extremely challenging and dangerous in Gaza. Without a ceasefire that facilitates vaccination campaigns for deadly diseases such as polio and ensures a fuel supply for hospitals and health centres, aid cannot be provided safely and at the scale needed to save lives.”

Ms Balfe continued: “Humanitarian workers should not have to work in such challenging and dangerous conditions and that unhindered access should be facilitated for all humanitarian assistance in both Gaza and the West Bank to guarantee the safety of all humanitarian actors”.

The key findings of the report are:

Aid workers continue to face huge logistical challenges as the humanitarian space in Gaza shrinks. As a result, three ActionAid partners were left unable to access their warehouses. On September 10th, Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians and wounded 60 others in a camp for displaced families located in an Israeli military-designated “humanitarian” zone in Al-Mawasi, proving yet again that nowhere is safe in Gaza.
Despite Israeli forces revising some displacement orders on 29 and 30 August, hundreds of thousands of families remain confined to Israeli military-designated “humanitarian” zones, covering approximately 13% of Gaza’s total land area. At least 553 Palestinians were killed and 1291 injured between 27 August and 8 September, with the death toll now rising to 40,988, and at least 94,825 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Thousands of people remain buried under the rubble and are presumed dead.
In August, the number of humanitarian missions and movements within Gaza that have been denied access by Israeli authorities has doubled in the north (34% vs.19%) and almost doubled in the south (27% vs 14%), compared with July.
A World Food Programme (WFP) convoy and an Anera convoy were attacked by Israeli forces, and an Israeli strike also hit a UN warehouse in Nuseirat, killing nine Palestinians and injuring others.
On 28 August, Israeli forces launched the largest-scale and longest military operation in the West Bank in two decades, raising serious concerns over the excessive use of force, killing at least 36 people, including 8 children. Israeli forces have imposed blockades and seriously damaged road infrastructure, electricity networks, and water supplies.
In the West Bank, aid activities have been severely disrupted by Israeli military incursions into northern cities and refugee camps. Due to the extreme danger and movement restrictions, Médecins du Monde reported that it was only able to access displaced civilians in the Jenin governorate six days after the army’s operation in the area began, causing a detrimental delay in the provision of direly needed medical and psychological emergency support.

A Polio vaccination campaign, led by the WHO, UNICEF, and humanitarian agencies, which aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10, got underway on September 1 and has now entered its second week.

Despite the campaign’s success so far, NGOs said challenges existed – including safety concerns around the transportation of vaccines to medical points around the Gaza strip and fuel shortages at hospitals. A UN convoy transporting staff to the north of Gaza to vaccinate children was stopped for more than eight hours on Monday, despite prior detailed coordination with the Israeli authorities, according to UNRWA.

Dr Mohammed Salha, acting director of the Al-Awda Hospital, an ActionAid partner, said: “In collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the Al Awda Health and Community Association is carrying out a polio vaccination campaign through primary healthcare centres throughout Gaza. However, medical teams face challenges such as fuel shortages due to restrictions imposed by the Israeli army”

Al-Awda medical teams face challenges such as fuel shortages due to restrictions imposed by the Israeli army, which hinders the delivery of fuel to northern Gaza, making it difficult to keep healthcare centres operational and ensure the correct storage, transportation and distribution of vaccines.

At least 13 Palestinians were reportedly killed in attacks by the Israeli forces on aid warehouses or vehicles, despite teams using the required humanitarian coordination and notification systems.

The report is available here.

More information on our work here.

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.

New report highlights continuing aid challenges in Gaza and the West Bank amid growing safety risks

The key findings of the report are:

A Polio vaccination campaign, led by the WHO, UNICEF, and humanitarian agencies, which aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10, got underway on September 1 and has now entered its second week.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

The Global Human Impact

The Risk of Inaction

About This Research

Summary of Recommendations

Further reading

Your Support in Action

The Reality of Occupation in the West Bank

World Cup is a risk for increased gender-based violence against women