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Children find an opportunity to play in Deir-el-Balah. Hundreds of thousands of people have moved back to the north after the ceasefire. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n
Thanks to the\u00a019 January\u00a0<\/a><\/em>ceasefire and the significant influx of aid it has allowed, the risk of starvation has been pushed back in Gaza. But if the ceasefire collapses, it could return quickly.<\/p>\n The\u00a0World Food Programme\u00a0has scaled up to support Palestinians with life-saving food assistance, while restocking bakeries and providing cash to help them start rebuilding their lives while reviving the local economy. As of Thursday (13 February), WFP and partners had delivered close to 47,000 metric tons of food assistance.<\/p>\n People wait for permission to cross into Gaza City near a checkpoint. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> \u201cThis is nearly triple what we got through in December and nearly five times more than in October,\u201d said Antoine Renard, WFP\u2019s Country Director for Palestine.<\/p>\n In the past few weeks, WFP has reached nearly 862,400 people with emergency assistance \u2013 food parcels, hot meals, wheat flour and bread bundles, providing critical supplies to breastfeeding mothers and children under 5.<\/p>\n Corinne Fleischer, centre, WFP’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, visits a warehouse in Khan Younis two days after the ceasefire. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> As long as the ceasefire holds, WFP can continue to scale up humanitarian aid. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> The needs in Gaza are immense. WFP\u2019s emergency response requires US$219 million over the next six months, to support up to 1.5 million people monthly. Additional donor funding is critical to sustain emergency operations and market restoration in Gaza and the West Bank in 2025. WFP is ready to send up to 30,000 tons of food each month, including food parcels.<\/p>\n Hot-meal distribution has resumed in the north, with an initial 20,000 meals per day in Beit Lahiya, while in Rafah, another hub serves 1,500 meals a day. Across Gaza, 7 million hot meals have been served since the ceasefire, through 60 kitchens in central and southern areas. Some of these have been relocating amid the evolving needs of hundreds of thousands of people who have moved.<\/p>\n WFP supports 22 bakeries by supplying fuel and wheat flour to make bread affordable for communities when many staple food products are still out of people\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n In Khan Younis, WFP staff inspect boxes delivered through the Kerem Shalom crossing after 19 January. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> The cost of food products is decreasing but only incrementally. Eggs, for example, are down 50 percent on December\u2019s prices but up to 1,200 percent higher than before the war. Similarly, wheat flour prices are up to 400 percent higher despite a steep fall in the past month.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is why it\u2019s so important that the commercial sector and cash liquidity are coming back into Gaza properly,\u201d said Renard. Cash assistance has a key role to play, he added, for WFP to \u201cgradually move away from food handouts\u201d to \u201csupport markets\u2019 with fresh, nutritious products back on the store shelves, and steer up Gaza\u2019s economy\u201d.<\/p>\n Destruction on a road in Rafah. The focus of WFP’s operations is keeping people alive. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> WFP has scaled up to provide cash to 14,800 households, so families can meet basic needs \u2013 beyond food \u2013 as they seek to settle and start on the long journey to rebuilding their lives. We aim to reach 150,000 people in one month. For the first time since the war, we are helping people set up \u2018e-wallets\u2019 \u2013 switching from WFP voucher cards to mobile wallets owned directly by people, which enables them to access markets more easily.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to transition to cash assistance as market conditions allow, empowering people to decide their own needs,\u201d said Stuart Kent, a WFP programme officer based in Gaza. \u201cWe want to shift from emergency relief to a regular safety net in the medium term, focusing on restoring local food production and the economic systems to support it.\u201d That would require a political solution, given Gaza\u2019s current isolation and lack of commercial access.<\/p>\n Women in a cash-for-work scheme in the south of Gaza make tent-covers out of empty food sacks. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> Looking at all the damage, where does a humanitarian agency start to aid recovery more broadly?<\/p>\n \u201cRebuilding Gaza is beyond the reach of humanitarian actors,\u201d Kent added. \u201cIt would require massive funding, governance, political will and the free flow of goods. Billions of dollars, government-level loans, debt relief and a long-term rebuilding effort are necessary. Our work is about keeping people alive.\u201d<\/p>\n UN vehicles in Rafah provide a sense of hope amid uncertainty. WFP\/Photo library<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> Country Director Antoine Renard said: \u201cThe ceasefire holding is paramount \u2013 not just for food but to sustain broader assistance beyond immediate relief.\u201d He added that items such as tents, water and sanitation support, medical supplies and communications tech needed to be allowed in at scale.<\/p>\n While responding to people\u2019s immediate needs is a priority, Renard said, the world should not lose sight of the goal of fostering food security over the long term: \u201cBefore the war, eggs, fruit and vegetables were produced at scale \u2013 we must restore poultry factories, seeds and greenhouses to revive local food production and help communities get their livelihoods back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 13 February 2025 Thanks to the\u00a019 January\u00a0ceasefire and the significant influx of aid it has allowed, the risk of starvation has been pushed back in Gaza. But if the ceasefire collapses, it could return quickly. The\u00a0World Food Programme\u00a0has scaled up to support Palestinians with life-saving food assistance, while restocking bakeries and providing cash to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[1329],"document-source":[2109],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1769,1945,2265,2033,2057,2005,1745],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-305865","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-release","document-source-world-food-programme-wfp","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-ceasefire","document-subject-children","document-subject-food","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/305865","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":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/305865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305868,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/305865\/revisions\/305868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=305865"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=305865"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=305865"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=305865"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=305865"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=305865"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=305865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nMillions of meals<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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![\"UN](\"https:\/\/www.wfp.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/media_embed\/public\/2025-02\/WF1988383%2020250123_PSE_Photolibrary__3494.jpg?itok=y8GjwjwY\")