Situation in Gaza ‘probably worse even than we can see’: Top UN humanitarian official • FRANCE 24

Situation in Gaza ‘probably worse even than we can see’: Top UN humanitarian official • FRANCE 24

Hello and welcome to tetatet France 24’s Flagship interview show our guest today is Martin Griffith he is the United Nations top humanitarian official and he joins us from Geneva thank you very much for being with us thank you for inviting me on the program Mr Griffith over 100 days of war

In uh Gaza Israel says it could f down its operation how would you describe the situation today in Gaza well you know I think i’ describe it as worse than than how it is usually seen and usually described which is quite an astonishing statement um to make uh given the

Coverage but the fact of the matter is that we have some really alarming indicators of of it of it the extreme suffering for examp example we have the incredibly incredible rapidity of the increase in famine numbers I know moving up towards the half a million Mark in that

Category uh with imminent famine many of them already in famine we have um hundreds of thousands in the north that we have not been able to reach with aid for some time we have a compression of population into the South into the Rafa area by the war um with nowhere to

Go we have an inadequate Aid flow to the people of Gaza not to be counted by trucks alone as I have said publicly elsewhere but to be also attributable to be the extreme difficulties of distribution inside Gaza due to insecurity due to lack of proper equipment due to the screening processes

On Dual use of items which are clearly should not be considered dual use like medicines and so forth so we have a situation where we can see the desolation of the place thanks to you and your reporters we can hear the cries of a generation of hatred being created by this terrible terrible

Tragedy um but but in fact the figures tell us it’s probably worse even than we can see the Israeli president said this Thursday in davo something that he had said before he says the International Community has not sent the 400 trucks of humanitarian Aid that Israel can screen

Every day is that true according to your assessment I disagree with president hsog who I have met and for whom I have a very high my regard first of all getting 400 trucks in a day is by no means enough um before this war started 80% of gaza’s sustenance was from the private

Sector and there is nothing going in commercially um but there used to be 500 trucks a day plus the private sector we can’t get that numbers in because of the screening process but more important than the number of trucks going in and I think it’s a it’s not the right

Indicator for measuring Aid it is the conditions within Gaza where we have roads full of unexploded ordinance where we have people move from one unsafe place to another where we have bombing near most hospitals I think there are possibly 13 out of the total number of Health institutions left

Even partially active in Gaza and where we have in the north of Gaza no access at all apart from a first assessment uh led by my friend Jamie goldrick head of the UN there last week as a first step towards providing Aid so we need to have our own staff being

Present at the screening we need much better understanding on Duel use we need private sector to send trucks in commercially we need uh a much different attitude towards deconfliction and safety of distribution inside Gaza now I’m not saying that’s easy to achieve of course I understand all of this is in

The middle of a hot War as we see in other parts of the world as well so I’m not saying it’s easy to achieve those things but to Simply blame the UN for not Distributing Aid in the middle of one of the fiercest Wars going on in the world under these

Circumstances I dis I respectfully disagree with President hog uh Israel has stated that its goal is to obliterate Hamas after the gruesome October 7 attacks but some Israeli ministers have said well no the actual goal uh is maybe to push the Palestinians out of Gaza uh do you think that this is Israel’s

Objective well you know I’d love to know what Israel’s objectives are because I certainly don’t and I don’t think many of us do around the world what I do know is that and I have seen the compilation videos produced about the killings of October the 7th and The Taking of those

Hostages I do know that that was a terrible act and has created such enormous anger and Trauma and so I understand that reaction however I also know from 50 years now of my life spent dealing with conflicts that to uh try to eradicate or whatever word you like to use eliminate

Remove disarm a group uh like Hamas as well in as as part of the fabric of society in Gaza in the way that it is being proposed is simply an enormously difficult and unlikely to be achieved task what will happen therefore is that the war will go

On at scale not reduced you can’t be more surgical uh under these circumstances with any real hope of reaching your enemy but that population will be compressed more and more down into Rafa and that South Western area and of course there will be a real danger of

Its spilling over into Egypt which Egypt understandably clearly doesn’t want to see happen and nor do the nor do the people of Palestine want to lose their Homeland because if they do when will they get back how will this lead us closer to a political solution it won’t and that worries me

Deeply because the Egyptians are bound to oppose it they have said very clearly that they will the International Community doesn’t want to see another nakba the Palestinians certainly don’t want to and I totally empathize with them on that so I’d love to know what the plan is for these many

Many uh gazin where are they supposed to live and who is developing the plans for governance for Gaza which are so important I want to turn to uh one of the consequences of the the war we’ve seen uh in recent weeks uh that the uh houti group in Yemen has targeted

Commercial ships in the Red Sea and the US and several allies have struck UI Targets in Yemen uh this is a country you know well because you were the UN Envoy to Yemen do you think that this could make matters worse we know the country has been wretched by a civil war

A dire humanitarian situation already well I think the first victims of uh that HTI action and then the reaction um are the people of Yemen because as you know very well um the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the houthi movement had uh come close to agreeing in principle already a ceasefire

Agreement At Last At Last after these many years of deprivation and terrible suffering Yemen has been the largest humanitarian operation in in terms of percentage of people needing Aid in the country for many years that’s suddenly being snatched away from them so the first victims let’s not forget are the

People of Yemen but that there is a natural tendency to what I have called reach for the gun uh in response to crisis we see this in Yemen we see it now between Iran and Pakistan we see it Iran’s attack on arabel the other day we see it

Obviously two years ago in Ukraine we see it in Sudan we see it now in Gaza Martin Griffith you mentioned Sudan the Civil War rages on 9 month on uh some 7 million people have been uh displaced uh 25 million according to the UN in need of food and uh the humanitarian

Situation continues to deteriorate how worried are you about Sudan and Sudan’s people essentially dying in silence well you know I’m so glad Mark you said that at the end there because that is exactly what’s happening they are dying in silence they are dying outside our screens you have covered it to your huge

Credit but it is rarely given International attention because of Ukraine now Gaza and so forth and Sudan is a huge worry for us um we have been attempting in recent last few months to do a reset on the jeda process to get a humanitarian Forum going so that we could actually have

Empowered leadership from those two military parties to negotiate access when we did have some negotiations taking place in jed1 you remember back in the early days of this war we did get uh there was a one week I mean literally a week where we managed to get supplies

Through to places which we didn’t reach but we haven’t been able to reach Kum since uh uh darur is still um an unknown entity it’s spreading South Sudan is increasingly being threatened at its very existence our aim has been to recreate to reconvene to to to negotiate access through this so-called humanitarian

Forum I’m hoping to and planning to speak to General pan tomorrow on this point uh to get the two parties together to negotiate but it is in silence Sudan is a crisis which because of its geography as you say 7 million people have left their homes one uh six million

Of them have left the country the impact on Chad on Central African Republic further west is documented but not noticed and indeed in many ways if you know you had to have a league table of suffering I think Sudan globally now would probably head that awful

List Martin Griffith I want to thank you very much uh for appearing here on France 24 from the United Nations in Geneva and thank you all for watching this Show

In the week that the Israel-Hamas war passed its 100 days, FRANCE 24 spoke to Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. “We can see the desolation” of Gaza thanks to the media, Griffiths said. “We can hear the cries of a generation of hatred being created by this terrible, terrible tragedy. But in fact, the figures tell us it’s probably worse even than we can see”. The UN’s top humanitarian official added that “we have some really alarming indicators of the extreme suffering” of Gaza’s population, such as “the incredible rapidity of the increase in famine numbers”.

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