Lazzarini, Director of UNRWA: “The situation is inhumane and civil order is collapsing”
The Palestinian people “feel abandoned and betrayed by the international community for failing to act in the face of one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time,” the director of the UN refugee agency said today at the Second Global Refugee Forum. Palestinian (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini. “You now see that human lives are not treated equally, that human rights are not universal, and this will have very serious consequences,” warned the representative of UNRWA, the organization that has suffered the most deaths in a single year. Conflict since the founding of the United Nations (more than 130 since October 7).
Lazzarini, who has just visited Gaza, described the situation in Gaza as “hellish.” “In UNRWA shelters, families are housed in close quarters, separated from each other by blankets, and this is for those who are lucky,” described Lazzarini, who assures that the Palestinian civilian population is “hungry and desperate.” “The mere arrival of a truck (with possible help) causes unrest in the crowd,” the UNRWA chief said, explaining that entire families of six or seven members are sometimes forced to spend an entire day getting a bottle of water or a simple drink to share canned tuna. “I am not exaggerating, the situation is inhumane and the civil order is collapsing, the Palestinians have reached the limit of human resistance and are enduring unbearable conditions,” he lamented.
He added that UNRWA workers themselves are in the same situation: many bring their children to their workplaces “to ensure their safety, or so that they can do it together if they die,” he acknowledged. “Sometimes I ask them how they can endure it. A colleague recently told me that he retreats to a corner to cry for several days,” Lazzarini described to participants at the forum in Geneva, the city where the UN refugee agency is based. UNHCR).
Lazzarini also used his speech at the global forum to denounce the use of “dehumanizing and derogatory” language in the media and social networks against Palestinians. “I am appalled by the smear campaigns against Palestinians and those who protect them. “You must help us resist this hatred and reject all the repeated accusations,” Lazzarini said. EFE