Latest news with #OliviaLePoidevin
RNZ News
8 hours ago
- Health
- RNZ News
Gaza running out of specialised food to save malnourished children
By Olivia Le Poidevin , Charlotte Greenfield and Jennifer Rigby Maryam, a 26-year-old Palestinian mother, cradles her malnourished 40-day-old son Mahmoud as they await treatment at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 24 July, 2025. Photo: AFP Gaza is on the brink of running out of the specialised therapeutic food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children, United Nations and humanitarian agencies say. "We are now facing a dire situation, that we are running out of therapeutic supplies," said Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Amman, Jordan told Reuters on Thursday (local time), saying supplies of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a crucial treatment, would be depleted by mid-August if nothing changed. "That's really dangerous for children as they face hunger and malnutrition at the moment," he added. Oweis said UNICEF had only enough RUTF left to treat 3000 children. In the first two weeks of July alone, UNICEF treated 5000 children facing acute malnutrition in Gaza. Nutrient-dense, high-calorie RUTF supplies, such as high-energy biscuits and peanut paste enriched with milk powder, are critical for treating severe malnutrition. "Most malnutrition treatment supplies have been consumed and what is left at facilities will run out very soon if not replenished," a World Health Organisation spokesperson said on Thursday. The WHO said that a programme in Gaza that was aiming to prevent malnutrition among the most vulnerable, including pregnant women and children under five, may have to stop work as it is running out of the nutritional supplements. Gaza's food stocks have been running out since Israel, at war with Palestinian militant group Hamas since October 2023, cut off all supplies to the territory in March, lifting that blockade in May but with restrictions that it says are needed to prevent aid being diverted to militant groups. As a result, international aid agencies say that only a trickle of what is needed, including medicine, is currently reaching people in Gaza. Israel says it is committed to allowing in aid but must control it to prevent it from being diverted by militants. It says it has let enough food into Gaza during the war and blames Hamas for the suffering of Gaza's 2.2 million people. COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, in response to emailed questions on RUTF supplies said it was working with international organisations to improve the distribution of aid from the crossings where hundreds of aid trucks were waiting. Save the Children, which runs a clinic that has treated spiking numbers of malnourished children in central Gaza, said it had not been able to bring in its own supplies since February and was relying on United Nations deliveries. "If they're going to run out, that's also going to affect UNICEF partners and other organisations that rely on their supplies to provide that for children," said Alexandra Saieh, Global Head of Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy at Save the Children. UNICEF said that from April to mid-July, 20,504 children were admitted with acute malnutrition. Of those patients, 3247 were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, nearly triple the number in the first three months of the year. Severe acute malnutrition can lead to death, and to long-term physical and mental developmental health problems in children who survive. The WHO said on Wednesday 21 children under the age of five were among those who died of malnutrition so far this year. Two more Palestinians died overnight from starvation, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday, bringing the total number of people who have starved to death to 113, most of them in recent weeks as a wave of hunger crashes on the Palestinian enclave. - Reuters
Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- General
- Daily Maverick
No aid supplies left, staff starves in Gaza, Norwegian Refugee Council says
By Olivia Le Poidevin 'Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,' Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the council, told Reuters in an interview via video link from Oslo. The council, which has 64 Palestinian and two international staff on the ground in Gaza, echoed comments on Tuesday by the head of the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA who said its staff were fainting on the job from hunger and exhaustion. The NRC said that for the last 145 days, it has not been able to get tents, water, sanitation supplies, food and education materials into Gaza, where Israel has been at war against Palestinian group Hamas since October 2023 and the United Nations has warned of a worsening hunger crisis. 'Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in… That's why we are so angry. Because our job is to help,' Egeland said. 'Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyse our work,' he added. COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, said in a statement that Israel does not restrict aid trucks entering Gaza, but international organisations face challenges in collecting the trucks on the Gaza side of border crossings. Israel is working with the groups to improve the system, COGAT said, adding that more than 4,500 aid trucks carrying food for the U.N. and international organizations have entered the enclave in the last two months. Many truckloads were still waiting to be picked up. COGAT said 950 shipments were on the Gaza sides of 'the Kerem Shalom Crossing in the southern side of the Strip, and the Zikim Crossing in the northern part, pending collection and distribution.' COGAT has accused Hamas of stealing food, which Hamas denies. The NRC said its supplies of safe drinking water were running out due to dwindling fuel to run desalination plants. The water has reached 100,000 people in central and northern parts of Gaza in recent weeks An Israeli official told Reuters that the U.N. has been given approval to bring in half a million liters of fuel. 'They're bringing in fuel and collecting, but they can bring in and they can collect more, and we are having discussions with them,' the official said.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
UN Palestinian refugee staff and doctors fainting from hunger in Gaza, says UNRWA
By Olivia Le Poidevin GENEVA (Reuters) -The head of the U.N. Palestinian Refugee Agency said on Tuesday that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion. UNRWA said it had received dozens of emergency messages from its staff describing grave conditions and exhaustion in the enclave, where Israel has been fighting a war against Hamas since October, 2023. "No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry," UNRWA commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement, shared by his spokesperson at a press briefing in Geneva. "Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties: reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering." Lazzarini also criticised a U.S.-backed aid distribution scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that has been supplying aid since late May, when Israel, which controls supplies into Gaza, lifted an 11-week blockade. "The so called 'GHF' distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill," Lazzarini said. The GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics companies and largely bypasses a U.N.-led system, that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation. More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the end of May, according to UNRWA estimates, Lazzarini said. The U.N. said on July 15 it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the GHF and convoys run by other relief groups. The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of GHF sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys. The Israeli Foreign Ministry, GHF and COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, were not immediately available for comment. GHF has previously told Reuters that such incidents have not occurred on its sites and accused the U.N. of misinformation, which it denies. Solve the daily Crossword
CTV News
18-07-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Over 11 million refugees may lose aid access due to cuts, says UN agency
The United Nations flag flies on a stormy day at the U.N. during the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey) GENEVA — Up to 11.6 million refugees may lose access to humanitarian assistance due to funding cuts, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. 'Our funding situation is dramatic. We fear that up to 11.6 million refugees and people forced to flee are losing access to humanitarian assistance provided by UNHCR,' said Dominique Hyde, UNHCR Director of External Relations. Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, Editing by Matthias Williams, Reuters
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
WTO overhaul targets fairer trade, easier decision-making to end paralysis
By Olivia Le Poidevin and Emma Farge GENEVA (Reuters) -World Trade Organization members are seeking to break years of paralysis in international trade negotiations, which have been sidelined by the Trump administration and risk becoming irrelevant, internal WTO documents seen by Reuters. Trump's sweeping tariffs have forced countries to line up to negotiate bilateral trade deals with Washington, bypassing the multilateral framework. WTO members had already struggled to reach deals due to a consensus requirement among all 166 members. Preventing members from blocking decisions is now the top priority in reform talks, diplomats told Reuters. "The sense of urgency is palpable, and there is widespread recognition that there is no viable alternative to reform," Norway's WTO Ambassador Peter Olberg, who was appointed to facilitate the organization's reform talks, said in an internal communication to members seen by Reuters. The WTO's foundational Most Favored Nation (MFN) rule requires equal treatment among members but developing countries have privileges to help them compete. These include China and India, which Trump argues are now major economies with no need for extra support. One document showed WTO members are aiming to streamline decision-making processes, promote fairer industrial policies including subsidies, and review the privileges of developing countries. The proposals feed into reform consultations running through the latter part of this year that are intended to inform the next WTO ministerial conference in Cameroon in March. The latest round of consultations is taking place this week. Among the proposals is the so-called Pareto improvement, which a senior Chinese WTO delegate in Geneva said China had put forward. This measure would require members to provide clear, evidence-based proof of harm when blocking proposals. Other proposals include permitting members to opt out of decisions and allowing subsets of countries to advance negotiations without full consensus. "The post-war multilateral system as we know it is dead," Roberto Azevedo, WTO Director-General from 2013 to 2020, told Reuters, calling reform discussions a "do or die" situation for the WTO in particular. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala conveyed the U.S. position to members in a restricted document viewed by Reuters, that a "reform by doing" approach - of practical, incremental improvements in the organization's functioning - is "vacuous" and would fail to tackle the deeper structural issues. The U.S. said in its 2025 trade policy agenda that its patience is "wearing thin" and that key issues will not be resolved until China and other major economies - implying countries like India - relinquish their privileges. China said in June that it had heard "every word" of the U.S. concerns, expressing openness to discuss such privileges, as well as tariffs and industrial policy. India's WTO mission did not respond to a request for comment. Current reform talks do not address the dispute settlement system, which will be considered at a later date, according to one of the WTO documents. The WTO declined to comment on this article. Olberg did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
