Latest news with #EuropeanHumanitarianForum
Hi Dubai
26-05-2025
- Business
- Hi Dubai
Dubai Humanitarian Joins European Commission to Strengthen Global Emergency Response Efforts
Dubai Humanitarian and the European Commission's Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) have signed a strategic agreement to enhance collaboration in humanitarian logistics, emergency preparedness, and crisis response. The Administrative Arrangement was formalised on the sidelines of the European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels by DG ECHO Director-General Maciej Popowski and Dubai Humanitarian CEO Giuseppe Saba. Senior UAE officials, including Sultan Mohammed Al Shamsi and Mohamed Al Sahlawi, witnessed the signing. The agreement focuses on improving the speed, efficiency, and coordination of humanitarian aid through joint initiatives, data sharing, and innovative solutions. It also reinforces a shared commitment to sustainability and operational excellence across global supply chains. 'This is our shared ambition to enhance agility, coordination, and sustainability in humanitarian response,' said Saba. 'As the world's largest humanitarian hub, Dubai Humanitarian plays a vital role in supporting timely and effective aid delivery.' Popowski echoed the sentiment, adding, 'This arrangement reflects our commitment to faster, more strategic responses to crises—built on innovation, preparedness, and knowledge exchange.' Key areas of collaboration include joint relief operations, exchange of critical logistics data, and co-development of training programmes to strengthen regional preparedness. The arrangement also encourages engagement with academia, disaster management authorities, and the private sector through joint forums. Both parties will further coordinate communications to raise global awareness about the importance of integrated and responsive humanitarian systems. News Source: Emirates News Agency
Saudi Gazette
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Saudi Gazette
Dr. Al-Rabeeah meets chiefs of UNICEF, UNDP and UNFPA in Brussels
Saudi Gazette report BRUSSELS — King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief) Supervisor General Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah held separate meetings with the top officials of UNICEF, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Brussels on Wednesday. The meetings were held on the sidelines of the European Humanitarian Forum. During the meeting, Al-Rabeeah discussed with Executive Director of UNICEF Catherine Russell humanitarian and relief efforts focused on supporting children worldwide. On his part, Russell underscored UNICEF's pride in its partnership with KSrelief, noting that this collaboration has made it possible to reach and assist millions of vulnerable children across the globe. The KSrelief chief also met with UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. They discussed topics of common interest related to relief and humanitarian issues. Kanem praised KSrelief's humanitarian efforts and its unwavering commitment to supporting and assisting communities and countries in need worldwide. During their meeting, Dr. Al-Rabeeah and UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner discussed topics of mutual interest related to relief and humanitarian efforts and ways to strengthen cooperation between the two sides. Steiner praised the Kingdom's active humanitarian role on the international stage, highlighting KSrelief's efforts in alleviating the suffering of those in need and affected populations around the world.
Scoop
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Gaza: Aid Trucks Still Waiting For Israeli Green Light Inside Enclave
21 May 2025 Existing supplies of basic necessities have been running dangerously low and on Wednesday the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, said that its nutrition stocks to prevent increasing malnutrition 'are almost gone'. ' Humanitarian assistance is being weaponised to serve and support political and military objectives,' said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Speaking at the European Humanitarian Forum, Mr. Lazzarini insisted that significant stocks of aid remain blocked at the enclave's borders. 'UNRWA is a lifeline for people in face of immense needs,' he said, noting that the whole humanitarian community in Gaza remains ready to scale up the delivery of critical supplies and services. The development comes a day after UN humanitarianssaid that they had been allowed to send 'around 100' more aid trucks loaded with supplies into Gaza. It is understood that several dozen additional trucks entered the enclave on Tuesday at Kerem Shalom where they await further Israeli permissions before the aid they are carrying can move further into Gaza. Too little, too late While such a move would be welcome in light of the desperate humanitarian emergency created by Israel's total blockade, relief teams have pointed out that this would be a fraction of the 500 trucks that entered the enclave every day before the war erupted in Gaza in October 2023. Today, one in five Gazans faces starvation, according to respected food security experts from the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform – or IPC. UN agencies have repeatedly stressed that they have stockpiles of relief supplies ready to enter Gaza. After 80 days of total blockade of humanitarian assistance, families in Palestine have been pushed to the brink of starvation, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday. Conditions on the ground are horrific and putting more than two million lives at risk, it insisted, while more than 130,000 tonnes of food wait at border crossings. ' WFP is doing everything possible to get the necessary permissions and clearances to bring in at least 100 trucks a day with emergency food and other aid in the coming days,' said Antoine Renard, Country Director WFP Palestine. 'This can only happen if we have immediate access and safe delivery guaranteed. But he warned that even 100 trucks a day would only meet 'the very minimum' of people's food needs for the month: 'On the ground, the situation is growing more desperate and the risk of insecurity and looting of human goods becomes even greater, as we speak a bag of wheat flour costs $500 in Gaza.' Economic 'paralysis' Across Gaza, the daily struggle to find food and water continues because of the Israeli blockade of all commercial and humanitarian access. Markets are 'severely paralyzed', supply chains have collapsed and prices have spiked, WFP said. 'The population is now facing extreme levels of poor dietary diversity, with most people unable to access even the most basic food groups,' the UN agency warned in its latest update on Gaza. 'Several essential food items, including eggs and frozen meat, have disappeared from the market,' it said. 'Wheat flour has reached exorbitant prices, with increases of over 3,000 per cent compared to pre-conflict levels and more than 4,000 per cent' compared to the ceasefire period from January to March. While the Gazan economy is now in 'near-total paralysis', the West Bank is also staring down a deep recession, with combined overall output shrunk by 27 per cent. Given that this is the deepest contraction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in over a generation, WFP cited projections that Gaza will require 13 years to recover to pre-crisis levels and the West Bank three years. Occupied West Bank demolitions continue In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, demolitions of Palestinian property have continued on a daily basis, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Wednesday. It reported new destruction of a park, a public hall and a swimming pool earlier this week in Beit Sahur, Shu'fat and Nahhalin. 'This is an area that the settlers have been seeing and observing for a while to take over,' said OHCHR head of office in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Ajith Sunghay. He explained that Palestinian properties are demolished every day on the grounds that they do not have Israeli building permits – even though these are next to impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Every day, meanwhile, Israeli settlers install 'new outposts which encroach on Palestinian lands…as a calculated tactic to displace Palestinians and consolidate the annexation of West Bank', Mr. Sunghay told UN News. "There is an international Court of Justice advisory opinion, which asks the Israelis to end the occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as soon as possible…The harm that it causes to the Palestinians on their daily lives, on their family's lives, on their rights is immeasurable and this is happening by the hour.' According to the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, Israeli settlers have damaged water infrastructure in the West Bank more than 60 times since the start of the year. Herding communities have been impacted most severely.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Thousands of Gaza's children face imminent death under Israeli siege: UN
Thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of imminent death after a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade on the besieged enclave, which has spread famine, the United Nations relief chief warns. That has put 14,000 babies at risk of dying in the next 48 hours, Tom Fletcher said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday. 'We need to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid,' the UN's undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said, describing the situation as 'chilling'. All food, medicine and other life-saving aid had been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza beginning on March 2. As of Monday, a trickle of aid was authorised to enter for the first time since then. Addressing the European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels on Tuesday, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said relief organisations have run out of words to describe the horrors unfolding in Gaza at Israel's hands. 'But the worst in all this is that we are confronted with a situation: If there is political will, the war can stop. The siege being imposed on Gaza can be lifted,' Lazzarini said. Since early March, at least 57 children are reported to have died from malnutrition. A UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment says more than 93 percent of children in Gaza, or about 930,000, are at risk of famine UNRWA Director of Health Akihiro Seita added on Tuesday that the situation is getting 'exponentially' worse and may soon arrive at a point that is 'beyond our control'. Israel told the UN on Tuesday that it would allow the entry of 100 trucks carrying humanitarian aid, a day after it said it allowed only nine aid trucks into the enclave for the first time in more than 80 days. Both moves have been roundly slammed for fulfilling only a 'drop in the ocean' of the humanitarian needs in Gaza, which has been largely reduced to rubble by Israeli air strikes and ground operations, which were expanded at the weekend. Israeli attacks continue to kill dozens of Palestinians, including many children, each day while what's left of infrastructure and aid supplies is being destroyed. The municipality of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza announced on Tuesday that a major well, the last remaining source of drinking water in the area, was destroyed along with its generator in an Israeli strike. This comes as more than 100,000 Palestinians have been driven out of their homes and shelters in the past several days alone, according to the UN, and have nowhere safe to go as they face famine. The Israeli army on Tuesday bombed the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza's Khan Younis as well, hitting life-saving medical supplies and causing widespread destruction across the hospital's different facilities, including oxygen lines and a laboratory. 'In northern Gaza, the Indonesian Hospital is under siege by the Israeli military with patients unable to enter or get out,' Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary said, reporting from Deir el-Balah. 'Aside from the Nasser and Indonesian hospitals, two other major hospitals in Gaza, the European and al-Awda, have been bombed and largely put out of service in the past few days,' she added. Tess Ingram, a UNICEF communications manager, explained to Al Jazeera why a scheme hatched by the United States and Israel to take control of aid distribution in Gaza was unacceptable for the international community. She said the UN and its international partners had 400 distribution points all over Gaza to help Palestinians whereas now only a 'handful' of militarised points in southern Gaza will be used under the US-Israel plan. 'This would mean that people would have to walk a long way to collect a packet that weighs up to 25kg [55lb] and then walk back again,' she on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasised that only a 'minimal' amount of aid will be allowed into Gaza for diplomatic and political reasons as international pressure and condemnation is directed at him and his government. His far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said allowing any aid into Gaza while some Israeli captives taken during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, are still held inside the enclave is 'a grave mistake hindering our victory'. As the Israeli military and government continue to promise to 'defeat' Hamas, devastating military strikes on the Palestinian territory have intensified. The Israeli army said on Tuesday afternoon that it attacked 100 targets in Gaza in the preceding 24 hours, claiming they were all 'terrorist' targets. At least 53,573 Palestinians have been killed and 121,688 wounded since the start of the war, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.
Euronews
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Can the EU and UK turn the tide after years of bad blood?
Radio Schuman spoke with Euronews correspondent Shona Murray ahead of the highly-anticipated EU-UK summit taking place in London today. In anticipation of this gathering, the tone was elated, with high hopes of a defence pact and closer ties. However, in recent days, some hurdles were hit. So, what are the main sticking points? And overall, how significant is this meeting? In this episode, we also take a look at the European Humanitarian Forum taking place in Brussels today, in the wake of the West's sweeping cuts to humanitarian aid. And finally, what are Europe's most crowded tourist destinations? Radio Schuman is hosted and produced by Lauren Walker. Audio editing by David Brodheim. Music by Alexandre Jas.
