Nearly 1.9 million Gazans remain displaced and more than 495,000 face catastrophic levels of food insecurity, the highest in the agency’s classification.
Thursday’s meeting coincides with the launching of a two-phase campaign to vaccinate more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 who remain in the Strip at risk of contracting polio.
In a recent address to the press, the head of the agency, Antonio Guterres, insisted on the need for a humanitarian pause for the launch of the initiative, which could begin by the end of the month.
The campaign has monetary and operational backing of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, which are responsible for financing and coordinating distribution and the cold chain equipment needed for storage.
“Polio does not understand dividing lines and does not wait,” Guterres told the media on Friday, just weeks after experts detected the virus in sewage samples from two locations, Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah.
The disease, which can cause paralysis, threatens thousands of children in a health, nutritional and humanitarian catastrophe.
This week, moreover, the organization denounced the continuing Israeli evacuation orders, which affected 250,000 Palestinians in the month of August alone.
The most recent orders, issued on Wednesday, cover an area where 150,000 Palestinians were sheltering in 80 makeshift sites, four United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and 29 informal shelters.
The arrangements are pushing people into overcrowded and insecure areas along the coast, while making the work of aid organizations even more difficult, Stephane Dujarric, Guterres’ spokesman, told reporters.
“People displaced as a result of these evacuation orders are facing serious security risks as they flee, and are arriving in areas where there are no supplies or services for them,” the UN spokesman said.
From October to July, about 90 percent of Gaza’s population, estimated at 2.1 million people, had already been displaced at least once since October 7.
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