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Updates on our operations on the ground and the current situation since October 2023.
Crisis Update: The Israeli blockade and relentless bombardment have paralyzed humanitarian aid efforts.
This situation has made Gaza the most dangerous and difficult place to deliver aid. Despite these challenges, your donations continue to save lives.
Since October 2023, we have spent approximately $63 million to deliver humanitarian aid to more than 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
However, the Israeli blockade and non-stop bombardment have paralyzed humanitarian aid and made Gaza the most dangerous and difficult place to deliver assistance. Many life-saving materials are not allowed entry into Gaza. Hundreds of aid workers have been killed. Israeli policies have pushed Gaza into a man-made famine. Aid organizations have been forced to scale back or completely stop many vital operations. Many aid workers are struggling to find food even for themselves.
Despite all these challenges, your donations continue to save lives. Islamic Relief staff and local partners continue to deliver aid to people every day. Currently, we are carrying out the following activities:
From time to time, we also carry out different distributions. At the end of August, we delivered hot meals to more than 1,300 families in our maternal health program and plan to repeat the distribution next week. Also in mid-August, we provided hot meals, clean water, and psychosocial support to 450 people staying in a shelter for cancer patients. Aid saves lives, but the amount that can be delivered is not even a drop in the ocean compared to the needs.
The Israeli assault and blockade have made Gaza the worst place in the world to give birth. Pregnant women, new mothers, and babies are facing hunger and extreme malnutrition. Doctors report a massive increase in miscarriage cases. Most hospitals have closed. The few hospitals that remain open face significant shortages of critical supplies such as medicine, fuel, and incubators.
Islamic Relief, in collaboration with a local NGO, provides maternal health services to pregnant women in need and supports the last two surviving hospitals, Al-Awda and Sahaba hospitals. In this way, the lives of many mothers and babies have been saved. Our work includes:
So far, we have provided maternal health support to 1,380 women. One of these mothers, Alaa, gave birth to triplets and calls them "three little miracles."
In Gaza, most banks are closed or destroyed, a serious cash shortage is being experienced, and prices have risen excessively due to material shortages. Under these conditions, delivering cash to people has become one of the most effective methods of aid.
As Islamic Relief, we provide cash support to families through the electronic payment system of the UN World Food Programme. This system sends a code to families via SMS or mobile application, and families can shop from open markets with this code. This aid also saves people from paying high commissions to moneylenders. Families can purchase the things they need most, such as food, healthcare, shelter, water, or clothing, with cash aid.
Since October 2023, the number of orphaned children in Gaza has increased significantly. By expanding our Orphan Sponsorship Program, we reached more than 21,000 orphaned children and their families today, whereas we were supporting more than 7,000 orphans in October 2023. We are currently trying to find sponsors for more than 7,000 orphaned children.
By providing monthly cash support to the guardians of orphaned children, we support them in meeting the children's most urgent needs. In addition, we provide support such as Eid gifts, winter aid, and food parcels to orphan families throughout the year.
Since October 2023, we have distributed more than 71.5 million hot meals, hundreds of thousands of food parcels, and vegetable kits. We also provided nutritional support to 35,000 pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children.
However, due to the Israeli blockade, we had to largely stop these food and nutrition aids in May. We plan to restart large-scale daily food distributions as soon as regular material supply is ensured.
During this process, we were able to continue small-scale distributions. At the end of August, we distributed lentils and maftoul (Palestinian couscous) meals to more than 1,300 families in the maternal health program. We plan to make this distribution regular. Again, in mid-August, we delivered lentil soup to more than 450 people staying in the cancer patient shelter.
Throughout the crisis, we delivered clean drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people. Currently, every day we provide thousands of liters of clean drinking water to displaced people staying in shelters in western Gaza. This week, we provided an average of 32,000 liters of water per day to 10,800 to 13,250 people living in eight shelters. biz hedefliyoruz to further increase this amount in the coming days.
In addition, throughout the crisis, we improved hygiene conditions by building toilets and washing areas in shelters, regularly cleaned 85 collective shelters, and distributed more than 68,000 hygiene kits.
Since October 2023, we have delivered psychosocial support to more than 100,000 displaced children and more than 500 women. Within the scope of this support, we help children cope with stress and trauma through creative activities such as play therapy, art, music, dance, and storytelling. We also hold family counseling sessions for adults experiencing grief and stress.
Last month, we organized psychosocial activities for 150 children and distributed toys. We aim to increase these activities in the coming weeks.
Our partnership with the UN World Food Programme has been one of our largest activities throughout the crisis. Together, we delivered more than 57 million hot meals, 229,000 ready-to-eat food parcels, and nutrition support to 35,000 young children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers. We want to continue food parcel distribution through this collaboration, but we have not been able to do so since May due to the blockade.
Currently, together with the UN World Food Programme, we are organizing community awareness sessions on issues such as the importance of staying away from buffer zones and preventing the looting of aid trucks, aimed at increasing the safety of civilians.
** Islamic Relief has distributed a total of 71.5 million hot meals. This figure also covers projects we carry out outside the UN World Food Programme partnership. See Question 5.
Due to the Israeli blockade, Islamic Relief cannot directly bring aid into Gaza. We can mostly bring in limited amounts of material through commercial suppliers. Israel completely banned commercial entries for several months. However, it began to allow a limited amount in mid-August.
A small increase in humanitarian aid thanks to this development has ensured more products are available in the market and a slight decrease in inflation. However, it is still not at a level sufficient to meet the needs, prevent the spread of famine, or restart humanitarian operations at the required scale.
Islamic Relief is not currently registered by the Israeli authorities. We share the concerns of many humanitarian aid organizations that the new rules violate humanitarian aid principles, will have a devastating effect on humanitarian aid activities in Gaza, and will limit the capacity of all NGOs to continue working in this region. These rules aim to undermine humanitarian aid and advocacy activities for Palestinians and require organizations to provide sensitive information that could put Palestinian staff and communities at risk.
