Date: 18 Oct 2018
coinciding with the International Day against Poverty, we call on you to work to eradicate poverty and unemployment in the Gaza Strip, as a result of more than 14 years of continuous Israeli blockade
The international Commission to Support Palestinians’ People Right highly(ICSPR) appreciates your positive role in making the world a better one, and on the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty which was declared by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 47/196 of January 22, 1992, it looks forward to your role in ensuring that the human being enjoys the right to an adequate standard of living. The importance and value of the portal to enjoy other rights related to it and related to it.
With reference to the above subject, and as part of our follow-up on the state of this right in the occupied Palestinian territories, we found it important to brief you about the dangerous regressions and the rise in poverty rates and the growth of unemployment in Gaza Strip coinciding with the International Day against Poverty.
Especially since the rules of international law affirmed that all persons must enjoy all rights as a means to ensure that everyone can live a free and dignified life, including the Palestinians, especially in Gaza Strip, who are suffering a real and imminent threat to their economic and humanitarian conditions, as a result of the illegal tightening of the Israeli blockade. On Gaza Strip for the 14th year in a row, the repercussions have prolonged the economic, health and social conditions, and the complex humanitarian catastrophe that could constitute, threatening the Palestinian community in general, and especially Gaza Strip, if the international community did not intervene to oblige the occupation authorities to shoulder their responsibilities. Towards the population of the occupied territory.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, during a survey conducted to determine the proportions of the workforce for the year 2019 and 2020, it reported that during the year 2019 more than half of the population of Gaza Strip are poor, especially the youth and graduates category, and it clarified that they live below the poverty line, and that the percentage of the unemployed ages 15 and over is about 45%, about 215,100 people, and it was also reported that the unemployment rate rose among the youth to reach 63% of the youth suffering unemployment in Gaza Strip. Deir Al-Balah governorate recorded the highest unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip, about 52%, followed by Khan Yunis, about 49%.
While Gaza Governorate recorded the lowest unemployment rate, about 41%. The Corona pandemic, along with the Israeli blockade, has affected the overall human rights situation in the Gaza Strip, as data indicate that the number of unemployed in the first quarter of 2020 in the Gaza Strip reached about 211,300, compared to 203,200 in the second quarter of the same year.
The number of workers in the Gaza Strip in the local market decreased by 9% compared to 17% compared to the second quarter of 2020, which explains the unemployment rates in Gaza Strip, which during the first quarter of the year amounted to 46% compared to 49% in the second quarter of the year. It was found that the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip is three times higher than the West Bank, and it is estimated that the majority of the residents of the Gaza Strip live on the minimum wage, which is 641 shekels.
The numbers and statistics constitute the state of misery that the Palestinian people live in, especially in the Gaza Strip, especially in light of the intensification of the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip for the 14th consecutive year on land and sea, which will increase the complexities of the rest of the sectors, and will affect the social conditions, as crime rates, suicides and violence will rise Drug abuse, depression and illiteracy, as according to the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, child labor has increased in Gaza Strip, and other dimensions that will work to dismantle the Palestinian social fabric.
As you know, what the Israeli occupation forces are doing is considered a crime of collective punishment against civilians in the Gaza Strip for violating the established provisions of international human rights and international humanitarian laws, which emphasized the occupation’s obligations towards the civilian population in the land it occupied. However, the Israeli occupation authorities practice a policy of delaying arrival Foodstuffs have been practicing the policy of the blockade on Gaza Strip and controlling the Palestinian crossings for 14 years by controlling the materials that enter the Gaza Strip, whether food or health materials, building materials or raw materials, and the matter that affected the health sector, which suffers from a shortage of about 50% of medical materials besides The agricultural products sector was affected by controlling the closure of commercial crossings, which caused severe damage to Palestinian agricultural exports, as agricultural activity in Gaza Strip constitutes an important activity because it has a major role in contributing to exports in addition to controlling the size of the buffer zone on the borders of Gaza Strip and depriving citizens of Cultivation and control of the fishing area that affected marine life.
In addition to the decline in the work of industrial establishments and establishments operating in the furniture sector as a result of controlling raw materials, and the Israeli escalations and wars destroyed many industrial establishments and agricultural lands, which made citizens lose their opportunity to work and thousands joined the ranks of the unemployed.
We see your humanity as a lever in order to ensure that members of the international community fulfill their obligations towards the universal values of human rights that are indivisible. Therefore, we ask you to make more efforts, by taking specific measures that would eradicate poverty and unemployment, by putting pressure on the Israeli military occupation authorities as the standing power. With regard to the occupation, in terms of its obligation to respect the rules of international law and international agreements towards civilians in the occupied territory, including ending the siege and supplying the Gaza Strip with all necessary basic necessities of life, in order to spare the citizens the scourge of the collapse of the humanitarian situation in the Strip, we hope that you will promptly intervene now. Gaza Strip and all Palestinian civilians deserve to work for them, in order to ensure that they enjoy an adequate standard of living, linked to the foundations and standards of human rights, and in a way that guarantees them a future dominated by human values, social justice and equality.
