January 15, 2009 | Read Time: 5 minutes
The shelling of a United Nations building in Gaza earlier today underscored the dangerous conditions in which aid workers operate in the area, more than two weeks into a military siege that has aggravated an already dire humanitarian situation.
Two U.N. workers and a CARE employee have been killed since the fighting began on December 27, and relief officials say the safety situation has all but prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid in an area where poverty and hunger rates were already astronomically high.
“Eighty percent of people were already dependent on food aid before this fighting,” said Rick Perera, a spokesman for CARE. “So it’s been a situation where an already difficult environment for delivering aid has become intolerable.”
International relief workers have been largely blocked by Israeli and Egyptian government officials from entering Gaza, and few groups were able to stockpile significant amounts of food and other supplies before the fighting broke out. Now, the organizations face added security challenges in entering Gaza.
While Save the Children’s staff members who live in Gaza have been able to distribute parcels of stockpiled food to 20,000 people since the war started, the charity has not been able to bring in more.
World Vision has purchased 50,000 food packages and blankets, but has also been unable to get them into Gaza. Rachel Wolff, a spokeswoman for the charity, said she hoped World Vision could do so before the end of the week.
The nonprofit group Internews Network had hoped to supply people in Gaza with radios that would provide information on hospital openings and other humanitarian news, but a vendor refused to sell the radios to the charity, and so far the organization has not been able to find a route into Gaza.
Relief groups say a three-hour humanitarian cease fire designed to give them time to bring in aid is insufficient, particularly as most of the roads into Gaza are devastated.
Some charities are asking their supporters to call for a permanent cease fire. Oxfam America, for example, recruited 66,000 people—52,000 of which were via the social-networking site Facebook—to fill out petitions calling on President Bush to ask for a cease fire.
Fund-Raising Difficulties
Many groups are raising money for victims of the fighting, but they say their efforts have been hampered somewhat by some donors’ reluctance to give until they see more aid being delivered.
Among the groups accepting donations:
American Near East Refugee Aid, which has brought in $138,700 online. It has also secured a $365,000 grant from a French charity. Mercy Corps, which has raised $175,000 online from American donors, and secured $100,000 from a charity in Qatar. The group has also raised $44,000 from British donors. Oxfam America, which has won $75,000 online. Save the Children, which has secured $50,000 in gifts and pledges from American donors. The charity’s worldwide operations have brought in $300,000. World Vision has raised $5,000 online.
Fund raisers say they do not believe that the economy is taking a bite out of fund raising, but that they face an uphill battle in encouraging donors to give for victims of a political crisis, as opposed to a natural disaster.
“People react differently when it’s a conflict or a complex emergency,” said Ken Mallette, director of Oxfam America’s annual fund.
Groups that focus on the Middle East say fund raising for this crisis compares favorably to past emergencies. American Near East Refugee Aid raised just $96,000 online in the fiscal year that encompassed the 2006 Lebanon war with Israel. That was about $40,000 less than the charity has raised for this emergency.
Michael Austin, the charity’s director of online fund raising, says donors have also been mailing in checks, some in envelopes the group sent out as part of fund-raising solicitations as long ago as three years.
Many charities are using blogs, text messages, and other tools to both raise awareness about the humanitarian situation and communicate with victims.
One of Save the Children’s staff members in Gaza, for example, is blogging for the CNN program Anderson Cooper 360. Huffington Post is publishing a blog by an Oxfam America employee.
“We’ve found that blogs are especially useful in places like Burma and Gaza where it’s difficult for the media to have direct access,” said Mike Kiernan, a spokesman with Save the Children.
Long-Term Needs
Other groups are using technology to stay connected with beneficiaries of their programs. Shortly after the fighting broke out and most of Gaza lost electricity, Mercy Corps starting communicating via text message with youths who participate in a program that links American students with their peers in Gaza.
The charity is also running a blog on its Web site that includes many of the students’ perspectives, and creating a way to follow the information on the microblogging site Twitter. MSNBC has featured the students’ blogs, drawing some viewers and donations to the charity’s Web site, saud Jeremy Barnicle, a spokesman with Mercy Corps.
While international relief groups worry about getting food and other supplies into Gaza, people who live in the region say they are also concerned about the longer-term development needs.
Nora Lester Murad is executive director of Dalia Association, a Palestinian community foundation in the West Bank she established to give Palestinians a greater say in development projects.
She says her group would like to support projects in Gaza but has been unable to because of the difficulties of getting access to the territory since an 18-month blockade by Israel after Hamas took power. One of her board members, meanwhile, lives in Gaza, but the two have never met.
Ms. Murad’s group has raised about $100,000 since it was created two years ago, but she says that fund raising has been difficult because of some donors’ concerns that their contributions could be interpreted as lending support for terrorism, and because of simple bureaucratic challenges such as the difficulties of wiring money to the Palestinian territories.
Ms. Murad worries the recent fighting will only add to those concerns, and hopes that donors who give to humanitarian relief will not forget about longer-term assistance: “We’re really struggling, and Gaza is going to make it much, much harder.”
