United Nations Radio

Gazan silhouettes

The UN continues to monitor the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip. At a press conference on Monday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on both Israel and Hamas to end the violence and take steps to avoid civilian casualties. UN Radio's Samir Aldarabi interviewed the spokesman at UNRWA, the UN relief and works agency for Palestinian refugees. Christopher Gunness reports that despite the arrival today of much needed food and medical aid, the situation for civilians "is getting worse by the hour."

CHRISTOPHER: The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate radically with the continuation of the Israeli air bombardment of what is one of the most densely populated parts of the planet. I'm pleased to say that we were able at UNRWA to get 32 trucks in to Gaza today of food and medicine. The medicine is being taken straight to hospitals which are overwhelmed to breaking point, and the food will go to our warehouses. We hope to have news about resuming food distributions, but I can say nothing really about that. So things are getting bad-but there was some hope in the form of some aid getting through today.

SAMIR: How able you are to distribute that humanitarian aid?

CHRISTOPHER: Well, this is the problem! Look at the pictures that you see from Gaza: the aerial bombardment is intense, and although we are being told that there are pinpoint attacks on terrorist, in inverted commas, targets, it is very dangerous indeed. And imagine what it is like driving at the crossing at Karem Shalom from within Gaza, getting out of your truck and getting the pallets of food and medicines onto your truck, and then driving through the potholed streets of Gaza with buildings around you being rattled by aerial bombardment. It's a very brave person that does that-and it is a very, very dangerous and volatile security situation for anyone trying to deliver humanitarian assistance.

SAMIR: Mr. Gunness, there was frustration and discussion about the numbers given by UNRWA about the number of casualties, and the mentioning of who are civilians and who are not. Can you elaborate more about what exactly happened?

CHRISTOPHER: We thought it might be useful to try and put out a completely verified list of casualties, names and addresses of people. And we put that out with the very strict proviso that it was confirmed and it was therefore very low because anyone that we had doubts about being civilian or not, and of course that made some very difficult judgment calls, were not on the list. But I think now (SEGUE) our list effectively has been overtaken; I mean the ability that UNRWA has now to go around collecting this information is quite difficult. So, I would say now that we have to hand over to Palestinians. And I'm pleased to say that major news sources today on the television and on the radio were simply reporting Palestinian sources as saying that the figure had risen to well over 350 of casualties, not specifying civilian or otherwise.

SAMIR: As a humanitarian worker, and as a humanitarian international organization, to (what) extent to you feel that the rights of the people who benefit from your work, these rights are being respected?

CHRISTOPHER: Well, If you look at the Op-Ed piece written by the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Karen AbuZayd, on the 10th of December which was the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you would see that almost all of the rights in that declaration are being violated, and protecting these rights is something that UNRWA takes very seriously indeed. The very act of feeding people, the very act of having microfinance projects in places like Gaza, the very act of having health programmes, is informed in a sense by the bedrock of the Universal Declaration. So in the very act of service delivery, UNRWA is doing what it can to protect these rights. But of course the ability to protect these rights lies well beyond the purview of UNRWA. When we talk about such things as the right to life, for example, that is something which bigger players than UNRWA have got to start respecting.

PRES: Christopher Gunness is spokesman at UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

Producers: Samir Aldarabi & Dianne Penn
Duration: 4'17"