UNITED NATIONS, New York – A top UN aid official on Thursday questioned “what has become of our basic humanity,” as the war in Gaza rages and humanitarian operations struggle to respond.
Joyce Msuya, acting head of the UN’s humanitarian office, said that “we cannot plan more than 24 hours in advance because we struggle to know what supplies we will have, when we will have them or where we will be able to deliver.”
“Civilians are hungry. They are thirsty. They are sick. They are homeless. They have been pushed beyond… what any human being should bear,” she told the Security Council.
Msuya’s comments came after the UN had to halt the movement of aid and aid workers within Gaza on Monday due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir al-Balah area, which had become a hub for its workers.
“More than 88 percent of Gaza’s territory has come under an (Israeli) order to evacuate at some point,” Msuya said, adding that civilians, “in a state of limbo,” were being forced into an area equivalent to just 11 percent of the Gaza Strip.
“The evacuation orders appear to defy the requirements of international humanitarian law,” she added.
Israel’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas has come under increasing scrutiny as the civilian death toll rises, but international powers including the United States have failed so far to help negotiate a ceasefire.
The current fighting was sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,602 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
“What we have witnessed over the past 11 months… calls into question the world’s commitment to the international legal order that was designed to prevent these tragedies,” Msuya said.
“It forces us to ask: what has become of our basic sense of humanity?”
Calling on the Security Council and wider international community to use its leverage to end the war, Msuya urged the release of hostages and “a sustained ceasefire in Gaza.”
Meanwhile, Israel has agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow health officials to administer polio vaccinations to children in the territory, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
“The way we discussed and agreed, the campaign will start on the first of September, in central Gaza, for three days, and there will be a humanitarian pause during the vaccination,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the agency’s representative for Palestinian territories.
The vaccination rollout will also cover southern and northern Gaza, which will each get their own three-day pauses, Peeperkorn told reporters, adding that Israel had agreed to allow an additional day if required.
The vaccination campaign aims to cover more than 640,000 children under the age of 10.
“We stress the critical importance for all parties to adhere to the commitments that have been made,” Michael Ryan, WHO deputy director-general, told the UN Security Council.
“At least 90 percent of coverage is needed during each round of the campaign in order to stop the outbreak and prevent international spread of polio,” he added.
He said that 1.26 million doses of the NoPV2 vaccine had been delivered in Gaza, with another 400,000 still to arrive.
The vaccine is administered orally in two drops. Health workers will need to return in four weeks’ time to give two more drops to each child to complete the vaccination, although so far there has been no public discussion of arranging another pause in the fighting.
Oren Marmorstein, Israel’s foreign affairs spokesman, said on X that his government has “has coordinated a large-scale operation with WHO and UNICEF to vaccinate children in the Gaza Strip against polio.”
Hamas said it supports the “UN humanitarian truce.”
Robert Wood, US deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said it is “vital that this campaign be implemented without delay.”
