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 * Middle East
 * Israel and Hamas at War


UNRWA BAN COULD KILL MORE CHILDREN IN GAZA, UNICEF SAYS

By Emma Farge
October 29, 20245:58 PM GMTUpdated a day ago
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 * Summary

 * UN humanitarian office says ban could represent new form of 'collective
   punishment'
 * UNRWA has about 1,000 health workers in Gaza
 * Israel says it makes all possible efforts to avoid civilian casualties

GENEVA, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Israel's decision to ban the U.N. relief agency UNRWA
could result in the deaths of more children and represent a form of collective
punishment for Gazans if fully implemented, U.N. agencies said on Tuesday.
A law passed by Israel on Monday to ban the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency from
operating inside Israel has raised concerns about its ability to provide relief
in Gaza after over a year of war. The agency, which employs thousands of people
in Gaza, provides nearly the entire population of the coastal enclave with basic
supplies and needs access through Israel.
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"If UNRWA is unable to operate, it'll likely see the collapse of the
humanitarian system in Gaza," said UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who has
worked extensively in Gaza since the Oct. 7 war began. "So a decision such as
this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children."
Palestinian health authorities' data show that over 13,300 children whose
identities have been confirmed have been killed in the Gaza war. Many more are
believed to have died from diseases due to a collapsing medical system and food
and water shortages.
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Other U.N. agencies described UNRWA's work as indispensable.
Item 1 of 4 Palestinian children gather at a destroyed vehicle, amid the
Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 27,
2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
[1/4]Palestinian children gather at a destroyed vehicle, amid the Israel-Hamas
conflict, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 27, 2024.
REUTERS/Mohammed Salem Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

The World Health Organization's Tarik Jasarevic said that about a third of the
healthcare workers helping with the ongoing polio vaccination campaign for
children in Gaza work with UNRWA. UNRWA has about 1,000 health workers in Gaza,
he added.
In response to a question about whether the ban represented a form of collective
punishment against Gazans, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke
said: "I think it is a fair description of what they have decided here, if
implemented, that this would add to the acts of collective punishment that we
have seen imposed on Gaza."

Collective punishment, which amounts to a war crime, is a term referring to
sanctions or harassment against a group taken in retaliation for acts by
individual members of that group.
Israel says it makes all possible efforts to avoid civilian casualties and
accuses Palestinian militant group Hamas of deliberately basing its fighters in
residential areas and using civilians as human shields.
Explaining the ban, Israeli officials cited the involvement of UNRWA staffers in
the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel which triggered the Gaza
war. The U.N. said in August that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the
attacks and fired them.

The head of the International Organization for Migration, Amy Pope, said IOM
could not replace UNRWA in Gaza but that it could provide more relief to those
in crisis.

The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start
your day. Sign up here.

Reporting by Emma Farge, Editing by Miranda Murray and Ros Russell

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Purchase Licensing Rights
Emma Farge

Thomson Reuters

Emma Farge reports on the U.N. beat and Swiss news from Geneva since 2019. She
has produced a string of exclusives on diplomacy, the environment and global
trade and covered Switzerland’s first war crimes trial. Her Reuters career
started in 2009 covering oil swaps from London and she has since written about
the West African Ebola outbreak, embedded with U.N. troops in north Mali and was
the first reporter to enter deposed Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s estate. She
co-authored a winning story for the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize on Russia’s
diplomatic isolation in 2022 and was also part of a team of journalists
nominated in 2012 as Pulitzer finalists in the international reporting category
for coverage of the Libyan revolution. She holds a BA from Oxford University
(First) and an MSc from the LSE in International Relations. She is currently on
the board of the press association for UN correspondents in Geneva (ACANU).

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