World Food Programme to cut aid to Gaza

Oliver Conway (0:00)

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 Hours GMT on Monday 19th October. The UN says it's being forced to cut aid to half a million people in Gaza. An Australian MP is hit by a car in what the Prime Minister calls a deliberate act. And a court in Kenya is delivering its judgement in the trial of a doomsday cult leader.

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The war in Gaza has left nearly two million people in need of shelter, with two-thirds of them relying on food aid to survive. But now, the World Food Programme says it's being forced to drastically cut support because of funding shortages. The UN agency says it will have to stop helping half a million people, with Community Kitchen supplying a hundred thousand fewer meals a day. Carl Skaal from the World Food Programme has recently been in Gaza.

Carl Skaal (1:10)

It's at the same time as we are facing winter, so this is not really the time to move back, but we are forced to do so. Not because we are not able to bring in food, or not because the needs are not there, but because we don't have enough funding. What we will try to do is to identify who are the one million people who really need our assistance every month, and then we will try to rotate every other month for the remaining population. But yesterday I met people at the Hot Meals Distributions, who that's the only meal they get a day, because they also explain how they don't have cooking gas, and so they can't cook in their tent. They were the ones closest to the yellow line, and they still are being displaced regularly.

Oliver Conway (1:50)

I asked our Middle East correspondent, Yoland Nel, what life is like for people in Gaza even before the aid cuts.

Yolande Nel (1:57)

Life in Gaza remains extremely tough. You still have nearly the entire population of 2.1 million people displaced from their homes. Two thirds of people are reliant on food aid for their survival.

You've had no real reconstruction taking place and very little recovery. There are still near daily Israeli strikes in Gaza. So these World Food Programme cuts, the World Food Programme has been such a lifeline for people in Gaza, they're coming on top of already all that hardship. You've also got things like poor access to water, poor sanitation. And now you have the approach of winter and the wet weather, which makes everything worse, especially because a lot of people are still living in very flimsy shelters in tents.

Oliver Conway (2:47)

And what is the issue with funding at this UN agency? And can anyone else step in to help the people of Gaza?

Yolande Nel (2:55)

I think there's very much a hope that with this alert, they will be able to get more attention to their funding crisis and get others to step in. But what the World Food Programme is saying, that they received half as much funding this year for their Gaza operations as they got last year or the year before. And they're saying that they need urgently about $450 million to continue with their Palestinian operations because they also have some work that they do in the Occupied West Bank as well over the coming six months. Now, when it comes to why funding has dropped off, I asked this to the country director here, Sean Hughes, he was saying that, you know, really it's a combination of things. There are of course global economic pressures that make it harder for countries to give the same level of aid as they have been giving. They're very conscious that this crisis in Gaza has been going on now for three years. That leads to a level of donor fatigue. There's a lot of other competition from even other crises in this region, let alone in the world for attention. And then on top of that, he's saying that, you know, there is this perception that, you know, because the ceasefire that was agreed between Israel and Hamas a year ago, that things have improved in Gaza.

Although, you know, in reality, the situation there remains extremely difficult. And you know, Gaza has to some extent dropped out of the news headlines.

Oliver Conway (4:23)

Yola Nel, talking to me from Jerusalem.

Australian anti-terror police are investigating after independent MP Helen Haynes was hit by a car outside her office. She's in hospital with critical injuries. Police arrested a man at the scene in the south eastern city of Wangaratta. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said the motive wasn't yet known, but described it as a deliberate attack. He spoke to ABC News.