<\/p>\n
18 December 2025<\/p>\n
UN agencies and more than 200 international and local NGOs issued a\u00a0statement<\/a><\/em>\u00a0yesterday urging the international community to take immediate and concrete actions to press the Israeli authorities to lift all impediments to NGO operations and humanitarian access across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n They warned that restrictive policies \u2013 including a new registration system for international NGOs that relies on vague and politicized criteria \u2013 are undermining relief efforts and risk the collapse of the humanitarian response.<\/p>\n They also stressed that many essential supplies such as food, medicine, hygiene items and shelter materials remain stuck outside Gaza \u2013 and that dozens of international NGOs face deregistration and forced closure by year\u2019s end. The loss of NGO capacity would severely disrupt life-saving services \u2013 including healthcare, nutrition treatment, water and sanitation, and emergency shelter \u2013 at a time when needs are acute and alternatives cannot fill the gap.<\/p>\n On the ground in Gaza, the UN and its partners continue their efforts to scale up assistance across the Strip despite these challenges, with a focus on providing winter support to mitigate the impact of harsh weather conditions.<\/p>\n Partners say that since the ceasefire came into effect in mid-October and as of Tuesday, they have distributed multi-purpose cash assistance to nearly 139,000 households, compared with over 40,000 in September.<\/p>\n Each household received digital payments equivalent to about US$378. Altogether, more than 305,000 households in the Gaza Strip have received at least one payment this year.<\/p>\n Partners providing education services report that on Tuesday, they\u00a0distributed<\/a><\/em>\u00a0hygiene materials to more than 90 temporary learning spaces across the Strip, benefiting nearly 115,000 school-age children. These supplies are particularly critical during the winter rainy season, as they improve sanitation conditions and reduce health risks in overcrowded spaces.<\/p>\n Also on Tuesday, three new temporary learning spaces were established in northern Gaza \u2013 two in Gaza city and one in North Gaza governorate \u2013 bringing the total number of operational learning spaces across the Strip to more than 400. Several multi-purpose tents were also installed to foster safer learning environments for enrolled students, many of whom are accessing education for the first time.<\/p>\n Finally, partners working on health\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that constraints affecting the entry into Gaza of emergency medical teams have eased somewhat in recent weeks. Denial rates have fallen to about 20 per cent, compared with 30 to 35 per cent before the ceasefire. There are currently more than 340 emergency medical team staff in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 18 December 2025 UN agencies and more than 200 international and local NGOs issued a\u00a0statement\u00a0yesterday urging the international community to take immediate and concrete actions to press the Israeli authorities to lift all impediments to NGO operations and humanitarian access across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially in the Gaza Strip. They warned that restrictive […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[1329],"document-source":[2169],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,1945,2005,5200,5362],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-313798","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-release","document-source-office-for-the-coordination-of-humanitarian-affairs-ocha","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-humanitarian-relief","document-subject-ngo-civil-society","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/313798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/313798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313800,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/313798\/revisions\/313800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=313798"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=313798"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=313798"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=313798"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=313798"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=313798"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=313798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}