Amman, Jordan, June 11, 2024 — Your Majesty, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) thanks His Majesty King Abdullah II for convening this urgent humanitarian response for Gaza conference today.
As others have already expressed, only an immediate and permanent ceasefire, across the entirety of Gaza, will fully prevent further loss of life to bombs, bullets, hunger and disease.
Efforts to increase humanitarian access and provide more assistance to Palestinians should not, and cannot, be reliant on a political dialogue which has, so far, failed to secure the permanent ceasefire so desperately required.
Since May 7, due to relentless Israeli bombardment and persistent bureaucratic impediments, the IRC, and our partner, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), have been forced to postpone multiple emergency medical missions into Gaza, despite health needs skyrocketing. Several of our Palestinian partners have had to temporarily suspend their programs as their staff seek safety.
Too much time and energy is being expended trying to fix micro issues. Current efforts to work around rather than solve impediments is failing Palestinians in need.
To this end the IRC calls for barriers to humanitarian access to be removed in a way that is both comprehensive and allows assistance to be provided predictably, safely and at scale. Efforts by stakeholders with influence over parties to conflict must be focused on a macro humanitarian reset which achieves three things:
1. The removal of all humanitarian access barriers and impediments into Gaza. Including:
- The reopening in full of all land border crossings simultaneously by all parties, as the most effective mode of humanitarian access into Gaza, and as the minimum required of Israel given its responsibilities under the law of occupation. We must stop counting trucks. While benchmarks on the number of trucks entering Gaza per day can be used as a proxy indicator for improved access, success can only be considered via a measurable decrease in humanitarian need across all sectors.
- An Israeli commitment to dramatically improve its inspection practices and stop arbitrarily rejecting critical lifesaving and life-sustaining items. This includes expanding and respecting the list of authorized critical humanitarian supplies and allowing humanitarian organizations to bring in people and cash to Gaza.
2. Unhindered access within Gaza, including via the South-North corridor. This should be fully deconflicted and enabled as a consistent, safe route for people and assistance. Including:
- Ensuring parties to conflict fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and refrain from occupying and attacking hospitals, UN facilities, schools and other civilian and humanitarian objects.
- A radically strengthened deconfliction mechanism and greater predictability for humanitarian movements - as measured by a decrease in the % of humanitarian movements obstructed and denied, and significantly faster acknowledgment by parties to conflict of deconfliction.
3. The restoration of critical services, especially access to clean water and the health system. Including:
- The physical rehabilitation of facilities and infrastructure.
- The provision of electricity and sufficient fuel, and the restoration of telecommunications services, all essential for an effective humanitarian response.
More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, despite sharing incredible resilience, are today looking to us in this room to break the status quo we find ourselves in. While the solution to the crisis in Gaza is ultimately political, a humanitarian reset is urgently required to ensure that tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more civilians do not succumb to conflict, hunger, or disease on our watch.
Thank you.