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Report From Gaza Aid Agencies Shows 'Catastrophe on an Entirely New Level'
"In Gaza, we are not witnessing a 'shrinking' humanitarian space; there is barely any space left to operate at all," the report authors said.
Jul 31, 2024
Israeli attacks on relief workers and designated "humanitarian zones" in Gaza, as well its tight control over borders and repeated evacuation orders, have devastated the ability to deliver much-needed aid to residents of the beleaguered strip, 20 non-governmental organizations warned in a report released Tuesday.
Israel has now issued "evacuation orders" that cover 86% of the Gaza Strip's land area, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This means that Gaza's 2.1 million people are now expected to squeeze into only 14% of Gaza's 141 square miles.
"We are doing everything we can to save children's lives in Gaza, but our job becomes more and more challenging by the day," said Jeremy Stoner, the Middle East regional director of Save the Children, one of the organizations behind the report. "Forcibly displacing civilians into areas that cannot accommodate them is causing a humanitarian catastrophe on an entirely new level."
"What is the international community doing about this humanitarian crisis?"
Between July 22 and 27 alone, Israeli "evacuation orders" forced around 200,000 people from central and eastern Khan Younis, and 12,600 from camps in Deir al Balah.
"There is no space left," Stoner continued, "and barely enough life-saving supplies to keep children alive. Without access to critical assistance, lives will continue to be lost."
Palestinians in Gaza face severe shortages of basic necessities, with half a million subjected to "catastrophic levels" of food insecurity, the report authors said. The amount of water available to Gaza's residents has shrunk by 94% since before Israel's onslaught began in October, and on July 26, Israel bombed the "Tal Sultan Water Reservoir," the leading source of drinking water in Rafah.
"We are talking about at least 34 children who have starved to death," Oxfam policy lead Bushra Khalidi said in the report. "If this estimate doesn't move the world, consider that most U.N. and other reports state that Gaza is on the verge of famine. What is the international community doing about this humanitarian crisis?"
Ola, a 42-year-old from northern Gaza who has been displaced more than fives times since the war began, told aid workers that "things are starting to take a toll and our bodies feel weak and flimsy."
"We can't really walk anymore but have to walk long distances to get water or buy anything," Ola said. "So at the moment, we stopped leaving the place we're in (...) and yesterday we picked and cooked mulberry leaves to block the children's hunger."
"It pains me as an aid worker that I can't do much for others."
At the same time, strict rules and violence at the border—both from direct Israeli attacks and the breakdown of law and order in their wake—make it increasingly difficult to get aid into Gaza, with deliveries dropping by 56% since April, according to U.N. figures. Save the Children reported that it had to wait almost a month at the Kerem Shalom border crossing to get four trucks filled with much-needed medical supplies to the other side. At the same time, Gaza's health facilities, which report authors say have "already collapsed," continue to attempt and treat people with a dwindling supply of U.N. medicines.
Another obstacle to delivering medicine is that Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories will only permit flatbed trucks to enter Gaza, yet temperature-controlled medications can only be transported in closed trucks. Because of this rule, 17 pallets of Save the Children's temperature-controlled medication are currently stranded in Al-Areesh, Egypt.
Oxfam said it had deliveries of water tanks, desalination units, tap stands, generators, and latrines stalled on the other side of the border, while the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) had 864 tents it has so far been unable to bring through.
"This is the first time I find myself unable to offer help to others. It pains me as an aid worker that I can't do much for others. In all past escalations, I would still go out and serve those who needed help," Salma Altaweel, an NRC support manager in Gaza City, said in the report.
When aid workers in Gaza attempt to deliver supplies, they put themselves at risk. On July 13, a drone strike killed two members of a War Child partner organization, while an Israeli airstrike killed four of a War Child and Action Aid partner worker's children and critically injured his wife when it struck his shelter in Nuseirat. Israel fired on a clearly marked U.N. convoy on July 21, and two well-labeled UNICEF convoys were fired upon just two days later. Since October, around 278 aid workers have been killed in Gaza.
Stoner of Save the Children said: "Aid workers are not spared from the violence. One of our staff members was killed alongside his wife and four children by an Israeli airstrike back in December, since then aid workers have continued to be targeted. Humanitarian staff should never be a target and humanitarian operations, including convoys and warehouses, must be protected. We've said it again and again: an immediate and definitive cease-fire is the only way to save lives in Gaza."
The report authors issued a reminder that Israel, as an occupying power in Gaza, is obligated under the Geneva Convention to safeguard the humanitarian needs of Gaza's people by allowing aid to enter and be administered safely.
"Our continued presence should not be mistaken for an indication of unimpeded access," the aid groups wrote. "We operate at great risk, despite significant impediments to our access. The risks our colleagues are exposed to each moment are unacceptable and contrary to their protections under international law. In Gaza, we are not witnessing a 'shrinking' humanitarian space; there is barely any space left to operate at all."
They concluded, "We, the undersigned NGOs, continue to call for an immediate and lasting cease-fire and maintain it is the only way to provide humanitarian assistance and protect and save lives in Gaza."
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BP Condemned Over 'Mammoth Profits' as Fossil Fuels Wreak Havoc on the Planet
"The world can no longer afford fossil fuel companies putting short-term profits above people and planet."
Jul 30, 2024
The London-based oil giant BP announced Tuesday that it hauled in $2.8 billion in profit during the second quarter of the year as the world faced the consequences of the fossil fuel industry's business model in the form of record-shattering heat, devastating wildfires, and other weather extremes.
The company's second-quarter profit surpassed analysts' expectations and brought its total profit for the first half of 2024 to $5.5 billion. BP on Tuesday also announced a 10% dividend increase, an expansion of its stock buyback program, and a green light for a new drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, even as international scientists say any new fossil fuel production is incompatible with critical warming targets set out by the Paris climate accord.
BP said that once completed, the new floating platform would have the capacity to produce 80,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
Chiara Liguori, Oxfam Great Britain's senior climate justice policy adviser, said in a statement that "the world can no longer afford fossil fuel companies putting short-term profits above people and planet."
"It is inexcusable that BP, one of the world's most polluting and profitable fossil fuel companies, continues to rake in billions of pounds while low-income countries are in urgent need of funds to tackle the devastating impacts of the climate crisis despite doing the least to cause it," said Liguori. "The costs of inaction are already here with deadly heat waves, wildfires, flooding, and drought, but it is people living in poverty who are left paying the highest price."
BP's profit report came weeks after the company, now under the leadership of CEO Murray Auchincloss, announced it would pause new offshore wind projects and put fresh "emphasis on oil and gas amid investor discontent over its energy transition strategy," as Reutersreported last month. The move came over a year after the company rolled back its plan to curtail oil and gas production.
Extreme weather driven by the burning of fossil fuels, meanwhile, continued to wreak havoc across the globe.
"As global temperatures spiked to their highest levels in recorded history [last Monday], ambulances were screaming through the streets of Tokyo, carrying scores of people who had collapsed amid an unrelenting heat wave," wroteThe Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan over the weekend. "A monster typhoon was emerging from the scorching waters of the Pacific Ocean, which were several degrees warmer than normal. Thousands of vacationers fled the idyllic mountain town of Jasper, Canada ahead of a fast-moving wall of wildfire flames."
"By the end of the week—which saw the four hottest days ever observed by scientists—dozens had been killed in the raging floodwaters and massive mudslides triggered by Typhoon Gaemi," Kaplan continued. "Half of Jasper was reduced to ash. And about 3.6 billion people around the planet had endured temperatures that would have been exceedingly rare in a world without burning fossil fuels and other human activities, according to an analysis by scientists at the group Climate Central."
Izzie McIntosh, a climate campaigner at the United Kingdom-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said Tuesday that BP's "mammoth profits" come "at the expense of our climate, communities, and the Global South facing the most brutal impacts of a climate crisis they did not cause."
"Labour has made some promising signals about a move toward green energy—it now needs to throw its weight behind tackling the rampant profiteering of oil and gas companies," McIntosh said of the newly elected U.K. government. "It can do this by introducing a windfall tax and other measures to fund the U.K.'s contribution to a globally just fossil fuel phaseout that works for workers and communities in the U.K. and around the world."
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'Disgusting': Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade
"The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs."
Jul 25, 2024
The richest sliver of the global population hauled in more than $40 trillion in new wealth over the past decade as countries around the world cut taxes for those at the very top, supercharging inequality that poses a dire threat to democracy and the planet.
An Oxfam analysis released Thursday ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers estimated that over the past 10 years, the global 1% has accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth. That's "nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50% of the world's population," the group observed.
"That is disgusting," Michael Taylor, founder of the Australian Independent Media Network, wrote in response to the new figures.
The analysis comes amid a growing push by current and former world leaders for rich countries to enact a global tax on billionaire wealth that would begin to reverse the damage done by decades of regressive policy. Oxfam found in a separate analysis released earlier this year that economic and political elites' global "war on fair taxation" has slashed taxes for the rich by 32% since 1980.
Oxfam said Thursday that global billionaires "have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5% of their wealth."
"Inequality has reached obscene levels, and until now governments have failed to protect people and planet from its catastrophic effects," Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, said in a statement Thursday. "The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs."
"Momentum to increase taxes on the super-rich is undeniable, and this week is the first real litmus test for G20 governments," Lawson added. "Do they have the political will to strike a global standard that puts the needs of the many before the greed of an elite few?"
A recent report by renowned economist Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley outlined how nations could go about implementing a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires—a policy change that he shows would raise up to $250 billion in annual revenue that could be used to support a range of priorities, from climate investments to education and healthcare programs.
"Thanks to recent progress in international tax cooperation, a common taxation standard for billionaires has become technically possible," said Zucman. "Implementing it is a question of political will."
The economist's report was commissioned by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has championed a global billionaire tax in the face of resistance from powerful nations, including the United States—which has more billionaires than any other country. In 2018, U.S. billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.
But reporting indicates that the leaders of G20 nations—which are home to roughly 80% of the world's billionaires—are likely to rebuff Lula's push for billionaire wealth tax, opting instead to pursue what Bloombergdescribed as "research on taxation and inequality that could take years to deliver results."
Reuters similarly reported Wednesday that G20 finance ministers meeting in Brazil "are preparing a joint statement for Thursday in support of progressive taxation that will stop short of endorsing the hosts' proposal for a global 'billionaire tax.'"
The global billionaire wealth surge comes in the context of growing misery for large swaths of the world's population. A report released Wednesday by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that one out of 11 people around the world—or up to 757 million people—"may have faced hunger" last year.
"The world's poorest people are paying the highest price of hunger," Eric Munoz, Oxfam's food policy expert, said in response to the FAO report. "We need deeper, structural policy and social change to address all of the drivers of hunger, including economic injustice, climate change, and conflict."
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