UNRWA sounds alarm as 1 in 10 children in Gaza malnourished
One in every 10 children screened in clinics in Gaza run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is malnourished, as child hunger surges across the territory amid the continuing Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid.
Israel’s punishing prevention of aid entering Gaza has led to “severe shortages of nutrition supplies”, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday, describing the situation for starving children as “engineered and man-made”.
Lazzarini said the UN must be allowed to do its work in Gaza, particularly bringing in “humanitarian assistance at scale, including for children”.
“Any additional delay to a ceasefire will cause more deaths,” he said, noting that more than 870 starving Palestinians had been killed so far while trying to access food from the highly criticised distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by Israel and the United States.
UNRWA’s communications director, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a videolink from Amman, Jordan, that “medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out”.
“Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March,” Touma said.
“One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries,” she said.
“As malnutrition among children spreads across the war-torn enclave, UNRWA has over 6,000 trucks of food, hygiene supplies, medicine, medical supplies outside of Gaza. They are all waiting to go in,” Touma added.
“The world cannot continue to look away.”
“1 in 10 children screened by UNRWA in #Gaza is now malnourished,” UNRWA @JulietteTouma briefs the press at @UNGeneva.
Before the war, such cases were almost unheard of.
Now, Gaza’s shattered health system is overwhelmed — and aid is being blocked by the Government of Israel.… pic.twitter.com/3b8S2qONef
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 15, 2025
Since January 2024, UNRWA said it had screened more than 240,000 boys and girls under the age of five in its clinics, adding that before the war, acute malnutrition was rare in Gaza.
Andee Clark Vaughan, an emergency nurse with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association (PANZMA) based in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday how Israeli authorities had confiscated baby formula from medical workers entering the territory.
“Immune systems are so compromised here because of the malnutrition,” Vaughan said, describing how Palestinian mothers are so malnourished that they are unable to produce breast milk to feed their infants and forced to make difficult decisions to keep their children alive.
“What we’ve been seeing here is moms trying to do their utmost best, mixing water – which is often contaminated – with beans or lentils just to make something of sustenance to get these kids fed and get them nutrients,” Vaughan added.
On Monday, UNICEF said that last month, more than 5,800 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in Gaza, including more than 1,000 children with severe, acute malnutrition.
It said it was an increase for the fourth month in a row.
Source: Al Jazeera
Cuban minister resigns after suggesting beggars are pretending
Cuban Labour and Social Security Minister Marta Elena Feito Cabrera has resigned after saying there are no beggars in Cuba, only people pretending to be.
Cuba’s presidency said in a post on social media on Wednesday that Feito had “acknowledged her errors and submitted her resignation” over her “lack of objectivity and sensitivity” in addressing issues that are “at the centre of political and governmental management”.
The news came a day after Feito made the comments about poverty in the island nation to deputies in a National Assembly committee.
“We have seen people, apparently beggars, [but] when you look at their hands, look at the clothes these people are wearing, they are disguised as beggars. They are not beggars,” Feito said.
“In Cuba, there are no beggars,” she said.
The minister added that people cleaning car windscreens live “easy” lives and they use the money they make to “drink alcohol”.
Feito also lashed out against those who search through rubbish dumps, saying they are recovering materials “to resell and not pay tax”.
The remarks quickly went viral, prompting calls for Feito’s impeachment and a wave of criticism in a country experiencing a tough economic situation in recent years.
Even Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was critical.
Without mentioning her by name but referring to the meeting at the National Assembly committee in which Feito participated, Diaz-Canel said on his X account: “The lack of sensitivity in addressing vulnerability is highly questionable. The revolution cannot leave anyone behind; that is our motto, our militant responsibility.”
Cuba blames its economic woes on a Cold War-era United States trade embargo, which complicates financial transactions and the acquisition of essentials, such as fuel and spare parts. The US imposed the embargo in 1960 after the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro.
The embargo is widely criticised with 185 of 193 countries at the United Nations voting to condemn it.
US President Donald Trump recently tightened sanctions on the island’s Communist Party-run government, pledging to restore a “tough” policy towards the Caribbean country.
Former US President Barack Obama took considerable steps to ease tensions with Cuba during his time in office, including restoring US-Cuba relations and making the first visit by a US president to the country in 90 years. Cuba has also faced an energy crisis and blackouts in recent months as supplies of subsidised Venezuelan oil have become increasingly precarious as Venezuela grapples with its own economic woes.
Last week, the US Department of State imposed sanctions against Diaz-Canel as well as the luxury high-rise Hotel Torre K in central Havana.
Travel and tourism are important to Cuba’s struggling economy with millions of tourists visiting the island nation each year.
According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Cuba had a gross domestic product of $9,296 per person in 2019, making it an upper middle income country.
Source: Al Jazeera