INTERVIEW – Let’s help children in Gaza become children again: UNRWA chief Lazzarini

Cairo / 
As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians return to the ruins of their homes, UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini urges in an Interview with Ahram Online the world to flood Gaza with food before winter exacerbates the catastrophe.

Lazzarini said UNRWA should only be dismantled on the day a permanent political settlement is achieved, ending the suffering of the Palestinians.

For more than two years, Israel’s war on Gaza has torn apart every aspect of life, turning the Palestinian strip into a graveyard. Cities have been flattened, hospitals bombed, entire families wiped out, and starvation weaponized.

UN investigators have concluded that Israel is committing genocide, while UN agencies confirmed that Gaza is enduring a man-made famine.

Moreover, humanitarian personnel have paid a disproportionate price; UN document 543 relief workers have been killed by Israeli strikes on clinics, shelters, and convoys since October 2023.

This tally included 370 staffers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The agency itself has faced relentless Israeli defamation campaigns aimed at silencing its voice and cutting its funding.

Lazzarini, a Swiss humanitarian veteran, has led UNRWA since 2020. This put him at the helm of the main UN agency providing essential services – from education and healthcare to emergency aid – to millions of Palestinian refugees.

With decades of experience in conflict zones with both the ICRC and the UN, including previous assignments in the occupied Palestinian territory, Iraq and Lebanon, Lazzarini has become a central figure in navigating the massive, often life-threatening challenges of delivering aid in Gaza amid war, political controversy and intense pressure on UNRWA’s operations and funding.

Today, as a fragile ceasefire holds, even amid violations, UNRWA continues its lifesaving work inside Gaza, with its chief urging a massive and immediate scaling up of aid to a population pushed to the edge of survival.

Ahram Online: Let’s start with the immediate catastrophe. Following the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the ceasefire, what are the most pressing needs?

Phillipe Lazzarini: The last couple of days were full of emotion because hostages were released, prisoners and detainees were released and finally reunited with their families. Hundreds of thousands of people have already returned from the south of the Gaza Strip to Gaza City. There’s a mix of emotions, relief at the silence of bombardments and the chance to breathe again, but also shock at the level of devastation and destruction.

Clearly, the needs in Gaza are extremely high, and we are also on the eve of winter, so we will have to scale up critical life-saving assistance such as food, tents, blankets, winter clothes, access to clean water, and medical supplies. We have always operated in Gaza over the last two years. Of course, not at full scale, but I must say our services and activities have never stopped. As you mentioned, there is now a ceasefire.

UNRWA has been very active in public health; we provided more than 10 million primary health consultations in Gaza over the last two years. We continue to ensure access to clean water and to provide psychosocial support to deeply traumatised children.

I hope that in the coming days we will be allowed to bring in critical supplies. We have a lot of supplies outside Gaza, both in Egypt and in Jordan, which could cover the critical needs of the entire population for the next two months.
 

AO: How can you manage the aid operation while Israel prevents your presence in Gaza?

PL: We must separate the two things. Is UNRWA active in Gaza? Yes. Are we providing services in Gaza? Yes. We have 12,000 staff in Gaza. It is true that there are two Knesset bills that prevent international staff from entering Gaza. I personally cannot go to Gaza for the time being, and we withdrew the international staff of around 20–25 people. It’s also true that, until today, we have faced restrictions on bringing supplies into Gaza.

I am pleading and urging that this constraint be lifted so that the agency can bring its supplies into Gaza. Despite them, UNRWA remains the main service provider in Gaza, covering more than 40 percent of primary health-care needs in the Gaza Strip, and being the main provider of clean water access. All these activities are going on despite the constraints imposed on the agency.

AO: Has anything changed since the ceasefire deal?

PL: The deal is new; it has just started to be implemented. On the first day, some trucks were able to enter Gaza, but in the past two days, there hasn’t been any direct supply from the agency. We are working on it, and I’m hopeful that in the near future we will be able to. I have been very vocal on this and have renewed my appeal to lift restrictions so the agency’s convoys can enter Gaza.

But the needs remain the same. It’s a race against the clock to respond to all these critical needs. We must never forget that famine has been declared, and a quarter of Gaza’s population is already in famine.

The rest of the population faces despair and hunger. In the last two days, we have seen desperate scenes of trucks being looted because of the desperation of the people, which is also an indicator that there is not enough food inside the Gaza Strip.

That’s why we need to flood Gaza with food to ensure access for everyone in need. Since the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned north, and we have also redeployed several of our mobile clinics back to the north to reopen health centres there, to meet the critical needs of people now back in Gaza City, for example.

AO: So, despite this man-made famine and such dire conditions, are we still, realistically, only at a phase of hope, rather than concrete action?

PL: We have a ceasefire, and we hope it holds. Part of the agreement includes a significant scale-up of humanitarian assistance and the reopening of private business activity in Gaza. If this is respected, I hope that in the coming weeks we will begin to see some tangible improvements and will be able again to reverse the deepening hunger.

AO: Do you think the world truly grasps the scale of Gaza’s devastation, in the short or long term?

PL: It’s very difficult to comprehend what happened. You have to see it to believe it. The level of devastation and destruction is such that it’s difficult for the rest of the world to imagine the scale of the disaster we are dealing with.

Gaza has almost become a wasteland. It’s very hard to live under such conditions, which is why we need a genuine commitment to ensure any recovery process can succeed.

Gaza has been destroyed; 90 percent destroyed. You don’t have a place to live. The economy has been destroyed; the farmlands have been destroyed. It is now a land that is almost not livable for a human unless we invest and commit to rebuilding. I understand that a conference on Gaza’s reconstruction is expected soon in Egypt. That will be the moment to measure the determination of the region and the wider international community to truly rebuild the Gaza Strip.

AO: Children in Gaza have been out of school for more than two years, and you have warned of a “lost generation.” What kind of emergency education initiatives can be implemented amid such destruction?

PL: You are right. Bringing back hundreds of thousands of children, currently living amid rubble and deeply traumatized, must be a top priority for the agency.

Before October 2023, about 300,000 girls and boys of primary and secondary school age were in UNRWA schools. Today, nearly 700,000 children are out of school. There’s an urgent need to bring them back into a learning environment.

UNRWA already has a plan. We’ll start by reintroducing basic psychosocial support to help children readjust. The learning environment won’t necessarily be a school building because most schools have been damaged or completely destroyed. So, we will combine distance learning, something we developed during COVID and previous wars, with safe spaces across Gaza where teachers can hold in-person teaching with children.

We need to bring children back into education now. We need to rebuild schools, and by rebuilding them, we also need to rebuild hope and restore the dreams of the children. Let’s help the children of Gaza become children again.
 

AO: The UN General Assembly is set to discuss the UNRWA mandate renewal in December. Do you think this renewal is likely, given the lack of funding that you have mentioned, and Israel’s open pressure to dismantle the agency?

PL: When it comes to the mandate renewal, I am optimistic. Look at the adoption of the New York Declaration by the General Assembly already in September, and the New York Declaration featured UNRWA’s role as an enabler to a successful move towards a two-state solution. More than 140 member states endorsed that declaration, and through this, the role of the agency. I therefore expect the same Member States to renew the mandate of the agency. So, I think there is no real threat regarding the mandate renewal.

But I keep reminding Member States that renewing the mandate is one thing, and providing the resources to fulfil it is another. Political support, which is very important for the agency, must be matched by financial support, and that’s where our biggest challenge lies.

UNRWA’s financial situation is very, very dire. Despite our cost control during this year, we are still confronted with a large deficit, which, if not bridged, will further impact our ability to deliver services. That’s why I’m urging countries to continue to provide resources, and particularly calling on the Arab region to do more.

We receive strong political support and solidarity from Arab states with the Palestinian refugees, but it is not yet translated into financial backing. When I spoke at the Arab League in September, I reminded them that, as of today, total Arab contributions represent only 3 percent of our income.
 

AO: You have made this appeal to the Arab world. Have you noticed any change in tone or response, beyond expressions of solidarity?

PL: There are a lot of discussions going on. We are still early in October; there are months to go. I truly believe we can do much better, and the year is not over yet.

I keep being reassured that the agency will not be let down. I also believe that everyone expects the agency to play a central role in the resumption of services in Gaza, such as public health and education, as we discussed before, and for all these reasons, I believe that the region will express not only solidarity but also generosity. I hope that by December, we’ll be able to talk about a different percentage.

AO: But do you really believe that Israel has abandoned its pursuit of dismantling UNRWA?

PL: No, I don’t believe that. Those who want to see the agency dismantled have not renounced their objective. But it is not only Israel which will decide the future of Gaza and the region; the region needs to be part of it. The question is how we reconcile this tension. The agency continues to be under assault and attack; there’s absolutely no doubt.

But I keep reminding people that it would be a terrible mistake to let an asset like UNRWA fail at a time we are talking about a roadmap, a path to recovery, a path to sustaining peace and security, and also a path to self-determination for the Palestinian people.

UNRWA has a critical role to play. We are providing public-like services to Palestinian refugees. If you get rid of this expertise and work, who else will come in? The two main providers of public services are the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. If none of them has a role to play, who will fill the vacuum?

We saw in 2003 in Iraq when public services were dismantled, which led to the chaotic years that followed. So, there is a lesson learned here: it is important to build on the existing workforce, resources and expertise. I hope that despite the remaining objective of some to dismantle the agency, the dismantlement, if it were to happen, would be undertaken through a political process, building up the capacity of future empowered Palestinian institutions.

The day UNRWA should be dismantled is the day there is a lasting political solution. Let’s invest in this and make the mandate finally irrelevant. Let’s put an end to a temporary, lasting agency through a genuine commitment to promote peace in the region.

AO: You have often spoken about the impunity that enabled those Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Do you see any real steps being taken toward accountability?

PL: I have called regularly for accountability because so many atrocities have been committed so far. Now, in a period of ceasefire and rebuilding, we need to go through a period of healing, reconciliation and justice.

I don’t believe you can promote a lasting peace between two peoples if the question of accountability and justice is not addressed. People need recognition of the horrible suffering and atrocities that have been committed.

AO: How did aid workers, and you personally, cope with such devastation and atrocities for more than two years?

PL: As far as I’m concerned, I have witnessed and heard all these atrocities for the last two years. The agency has been under tremendous attack, and I have been personally attacked as well. The way to handle a situation like that is to make sure you do not take the experience in the field personally. You do it because you are holding a function, and that helps much.

The real question is to ask the people on the ground: how do they cope? I don’t know if they cope. People are in very deep shock and trauma, and they have to recognize the shock and what they have endured to begin the healing process.