UNWFP had recently decided to stop providing food aid to 200,000 people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. An already impoverished population is set for greater suffering in the coming months and years.
Under the banner “Save the Children of Gaza,” many Palestinian children in the besieged Gaza Strip took part in a sit-in outside the headquarters of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The protest was not held in the context of the Israeli war on Gaza as is often the case. This time around the target is the United Nations World Food Program (UNWFP).
UNWFP had recently decided to stop providing food aid to 200,000 people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. An already impoverished population is set for greater suffering in the coming months and years.
The children carried banners that read “Save the Children of Gaza” and “Poverty has increased, hunger has increased, and restrictions have increased.” Indeed, the correlation between the Israeli restrictions and siege is directly linked to poverty and hunger.
The Palestine Chronicle spoke to some of the children.
“This decision is like taking the smile away from the faces of the children of Palestine,” said Palestinian child Muhammad Taha, who belongs to one of the families that have been cut off from food aid.
Taha called on the United Nations and international institutions to “provide means to allow the children of Palestine to live with dignity, like other children all over the world”
At the start of this month, UNWFP decided to stop its food assistance program for 200,000 people in the Palestinian territories due to a lack of funding.
According to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, 61.6 percent of the population of Gaza, numbering 2.3 million people, live in a state of poverty, due to the Israeli restrictions imposed on the Strip since 2007, while the unemployment rate by the end of 2022 reached 47 percent.
The rally was organized by the higher commission for claiming the rights of the poor and the beneficiaries of social affairs (Sha’ibiya), an organization dedicated to advocating for the rights of the poor in the Gaza Strip.
(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
