Category Archives: Aid

Israel accused of ethnic cleansing after more than 140 killed in Gaza in 24 hours

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Israel says intensified bombings are part of campaign expansion to ‘achieve all of the war goals in Gaza’

At least 140 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, a deadly escalation as Israel seemed poised to launch a major offensive in the besieged territory.

Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed more than 300 people since Thursday, Palestinian health officials said, one of the deadliest periods in the war since ceasefire talks broke down in March. The intensified bombing campaigns came as Israel’s total blockade on humanitarian aid has prompted fears of a famine in the Palestinian territory.

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Almost 300m people at risk of death through starvation – report

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Aid cuts, conflict, climate and economic shocks contribute to sixth consecutive rise in numbers facing ‘high levels of food insecurity’

Acute food insecurity continues to rise at an alarming rate, with almost 300 million people at risk of death through starvation, new analysis reveals.

Escalating conflict and cuts to humanitarian aid along with climate and economic shocks forced an additional 13.7 million people into chronic food insecurity last year.

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Aid groups voice alarm as US pushes Israeli plan for Gaza assistance

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Groups say plan to resume limited humanitarian assistance under strict Israeli rules ‘risks enabling war crimes’

Aid groups have voiced alarm at US moves to pressure them into accepting an Israeli proposal to resume limited humanitarian assistance to the war-ravaged territory under strictly controlled conditions.

The Trump administration has attempted to strong-arm international agencies – including the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) – into accepting Israel’s stringent rules for resuming deliveries, according to sources familiar with the discussions and news reports.

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Trump’s aid cuts blamed as food rations stopped for a million refugees in Uganda

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UN World Food Programme says $50m is urgently needed amid fears that Uganda may now begin forced repatriations

Food rations for a million people in Uganda have been cut off completely this week amid a funding crisis at the United Nations World Food Programme, raising fears that refugees will now be pushed back into countries at war.

The WFP in Uganda warned two weeks ago that $50m (£37m) was urgently needed to help refugees and asylum seekers fleeing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Sudan.

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Francis’s popemobile to become a mobile clinic for children in Gaza

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Catholic charity says the late pontiff endorsed the idea of creating a ‘vehicle of hope’ to deliver medical aid

Just over a decade ago, the converted Mitsubishi whisked Pope Francis through the streets of Bethlehem before it was left to gather dust. Now, in keeping with one of the late pontiff’s last wishes, the popemobile is being given a second life – as a mobile health clinic for children in the Gaza Strip.

In a region ravaged by more than 18 months of war, the initiative is both symbolic and practical, said Peter Brune, the secretary general of the Catholic charity Caritas Sweden.

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Israel seems set on destroying system of international law compliance, ICJ hears

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Country accused of obstructing UN as court considers its decision to end cooperation with Unrwa

Israel appears set on destroying the framework created to ensure compliance with international law in a way that will have profound consequences that reverberate far beyond Palestine, the international court of justice has heard.

The warning was made at the start of five days of proceedings in The Hague that may prove critical to Israel’s future within the world body. The UN’s top court will hear from dozens of nations and organisations in order to draw up an advisory opinion on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to Palestinians more than 50 days into its total blockade on aid entering Gaza.

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Despair in Gaza as Israeli aid blockade creates crisis ‘unmatched in severity’

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Palestinians pushed into new misery as supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out in seven-week siege

Gaza has been pushed to new depths of despair, civilians, medics and humanitarian workers say, by the unprecedented seven-week-long Israeli military blockade that has cut off all aid to the strip.

The siege has left the Palestinian territory facing conditions unmatched in severity since the beginning of the war as residents grapple with sweeping new evacuation orders, the renewed bombing of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, and the exhaustion of food, fuel for generators and medical supplies.

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EU will struggle to fill gap left by USAID as European countries cut their budgets

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NGOs warn of ‘some difficult years’ ahead as increasing humanitarian needs meet shrinking finances

The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has captured headlines, but “very regrettable” reductions in European aid budgets are also contributing to a void in support for some of the poorest people in the world’s most fragile states, according to MEPs and NGOs.

Isabella Lövin, a deputy chair of the European parliament’s development committee, said USAID cuts would have “very dramatic consequences around the world”. But she also criticised recent decisions by EU member states to reduce their aid budgets as “very regrettable” and “wrong”. It would be impossible for the EU to fill the gap, she added.

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‘Shame’ on world leaders for neglect of displaced civilians in DRC, says aid chief

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US and Europe criticised by head of Norwegian Refugee Council for ‘neglect’ of people living ‘subhuman’ existence

World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.

In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces.

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‘What was their crime?’ Families tell of shock over IDF killing of Gaza paramedics

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Relatives who waited agonising week before bodies were found speak of passion that drove Red Crescent workers

• Our aid workers were brutally killed and thrown into a mass grave in Gaza. This must never happen again

Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a civilian now that Israeli forces have resumed their military campaign with even more ferocity, but for the first responders who rush towards the wreckage of bombed buildings, the risks are multiplied many times over.

The 15 paramedics and rescue workers whose bodies were found last weekend in a bulldozed pit outside Rafah knew they were putting their lives in peril to try to save others, but they could not have been prepared for what awaited them in the early hours of 23 March.

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Australia in discussions to avoid ‘devastating consequences’ of US aid cuts for Pacific nations

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Exclusive: Penny Wong says diplomats are consulting US government and ‘engaging with countries in our region’ to determine need for additional support

The Australian government is consulting Pacific nations to assess the “devastating consequences” of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid and considering what additional support it can provide ahead of next week’s federal budget.

In a letter to a Liberal MP concerned the freeze could cause “irreversible” damage to Pacific communities, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said Australian diplomats were discussing its impact with US government officials.

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US evangelical groups urge Trump to spare HIV/Aids program from aid cuts

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Christian organizations helped create Pepfar, credited with preventing 25m early deaths, particularly in Africa

Christian evangelical organizations instrumental in creating the US program that has saved millions of lives from HIV/Aids are pressing the Trump administration to rescue the scheme from crushing cuts to foreign assistance.

The state department has said that the two-decade-old President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), which is estimated to have prevented 25m early deaths, is exempt from the cancellation of most US overseas aid. But the program is heavily reliant on logistical support from the US Agency for International Development (USAid), which has seen most of its projects killed off.

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US foreign aid projects asked to justify their work in White House survey

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Staff questioned on eccentric list of criteria that meet Trump administration’s new national security priorities

Staff on hundreds of foreign aid projects left in limbo by the Trump administration’s funding freeze have received a survey that asks them to justify their work under an eccentric list of criteria that meet the White House’s new national security priorities.

The survey, copies of which have been obtained by the Guardian, asks foreign aid programme staff to detail whether they contribute to limiting illegal immigration or securing US borders, “combatting Christian prosecution”,and whether they help the US secure access to rare earth minerals.

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UK, France and Germany say Gaza aid freeze could breach international law

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Ministers issue joint statement after Israel cuts off supplies in effort to push Hamas to accept change in ceasefire deal

Britain has joined Germany and France to warn that Israel could be in breach of international law by halting the entry of aid into Gaza, which is facing a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, signed a joint statement with his French and German counterparts to urge Israel and Hamas to engage constructively to get ceasefire talks back on track.

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Refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma camp clash with police after food supplies cut

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Teargas fired during protest at reduced rations after US aid freeze wipes out half of World Food Programme budget

Thousands of refugees clashed with police in a Kenyan refugee camp this week after receiving news that their food allocations would be cut because of funding problems.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, confirmed that four refugees and a local government official had been injured when police intervened to stop the protesters at the Kakuma refugee camp on Monday.

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World Food Programme to close office in southern Africa after Trump aid cuts

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UN food agency received half its budget from US last year and is accelerating merger plan as a result of funding cuts

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is closing its southern Africa office in the wake of the Trump administration’s aid cuts.

In a statement, a spokesperson said the office in Johannesburg would close and the WFP would consolidate its southern and east Africa operations into one regional office in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Israeli block on aid raises health fears for Gaza’s undernourished population

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Agencies say health situation is a ‘catastrophe’ and recent aid deliveries were a fraction of what is needed

Briefing the Israeli press after Benjamin Netanyahu’s order to turn off the aid supply to Gaza, government officials claimed that the Palestinian territory had several months’ worth of food stockpiled from earlier deliveries. However, the announcement led to an immediate jump in prices of basic necessities in Gaza, with residents saying they had doubled.

Aid agencies say the population of Gaza remains highly vulnerable and that the blockade of humanitarian supplies to a civilian population is unacceptable in any circumstances.

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Anneliese Dodds resigns over Keir Starmer’s decision to cut aid budget

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Exclusive: International development minister warns it will be ‘impossible’ to retain funding in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine

Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister, has quit her post over Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the international aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence spending, warning it could enable Russia and China to further their global influence.

The senior Labour MP, who attended cabinet, predicted that the UK pulling back from development would bolster Moscow, which has already been aggressively increasing its presence worldwide, as well as encourage Beijing’s attempts to rewrite global rules.

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Cuts to UK vaccine funding could lead to ‘huge numbers’ of child deaths overseas

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Exclusive: Hundreds of thousands of world’s poorest children could die if aid programme slashed, experts warn

Hundreds of thousands of children in the world’s poorest countries will die if the UK cuts back funding for a hugely effective vaccination programme as part of its significant reduction in overseas aid, the Guardian has been told.

According to data collated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), to which the UK has previously been one of the main contributors, even a small cut in UK funding would be expected to result in millions fewer vaccinations, leading to huge numbers of preventable deaths.

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US shutdown of HIV/Aids funding ‘could lead to 500,000 deaths in South Africa’

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USAid cuts to clinics dispensing antiretroviral drugs will be ‘death sentence for mothers and children’, expert warns

Sweeping notices of termination of funding have been received by organisations working with HIV and Aids across Africa, with dire predictions of a huge rise in deaths as a result.

After the US announced a permanent end to funding for HIV projects, services across the board have been affected, say doctors and programme managers, from projects helping orphans and pregnant women to those reaching transgender individuals and sex workers.

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