Around 94 percent of Gaza's population — 1.98 million people — urgently need humanitarian assistance in the form of shelter and non-food items, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in a report published on its official website on Friday, as winter approaches and living conditions worsen.
Source: Petra via Fana News
A winter needs assessment covering 113 displacement sites identified 18 emergency shelters as unsafe because of risks to the structural integrity of their buildings, the report said. Four of the shelters face a very high risk of collapse, six were classified as high risk and another eight as medium risk.
Source: Petra via Fana News
UNRWA also reported that 58 percent of the population face critical or catastrophic shelter needs, that 84 percent experience frequent and irregular interruptions in access to safe and clean water, and that 89 percent of households lack sufficient basic hygiene supplies, Petra reported from Amman.
Source: Petra via Fana News
The agency said it was working with humanitarian partners to secure tents for the voluntary relocation of affected families, and warned that acute respiratory infections were rising ahead of winter, with a further increase expected in the coming weeks, according to the summary of the UNRWA statement carried by Pakistan TV.
Source: UNRWA via Pakistan TV
Background: a winter warning that has been building since October
Friday's report lands on warnings issued a month ago. On 9 October, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said nearly one million displaced people in Gaza faced flood risks this winter, that only about 17 percent of identified winter shelter needs were covered by the combined humanitarian pipeline, and that some 8,600 IOM emergency shelter kits were pre-positioned outside Gaza but being turned away at the crossings, according to IOM and cluster figures reported via ReliefWeb. UNRWA's own earlier situation reporting counted about 235,000 people in some 400 flood-prone displacement sites and more than 44,000 living in unsafe buildings at heightened risk of collapse.
Source: IOM / Shelter Cluster via Magna Bureau summary of ReliefWeb reports
Gaza's own winter emergency committee warned on 4 November that around 7,800 tents sit in flood-prone areas and need urgent relocation, that roughly 200,000 deteriorated tents are sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, and that around 2,000 structurally damaged buildings are at risk of collapse during upcoming storms, ABNA reported, citing Gaza officials.
Source: ABNA (4 Nov)
What happens next
The immediate race is against the winter rains: families in the four very-high-risk shelters need somewhere safer before storms test cracked buildings, and UNRWA's plan depends on tents actually reaching the sites for voluntary relocation. Friday's report did not give a timetable for the relocations or say how many families the 18 unsafe shelters currently hold. What is established is the scale — nearly the whole population needs shelter help, and more than half of it is in the two worst categories, weeks before the coldest weather arrives.