As we mentioned a US military ship is sailing towards the Middle East with equipment to build that temporary Pier off gaza’s Coast the ship set sail from a military based in Virginia the US is building the pier to help try and get Aid into Gaza by sea according to the
Pentagon though the construction could take up to 60 days Jeremy kandik is the president of refugees International he was also the director of us Aid’s office of foreign Disaster Assistance I spoke to him on Friday about that pier and why he says airdropping Aid is actually inefficient Jeremy kandek thank you so
Much for joining us my pleasure want to start with some news uh from the president in his State of the Union that the us is going to build a temporary Port of some kind off of gaza’s coast to receive humanitarian Aid what do you
Make of that plan is that um is it is it a good plan will it be a good alternative for them well at this point the situation is so desperate that anything that helps to get more Aid in is a positive thing but I think there’s a difference between
Helpful and adequate it is helpful if it brings more in it is nowhere near adequate to the level of need that exists uh what’s always important to keep in the in in in kind of the Forefront of your mind is that there is now a famine getting underway uh there
Have been predictions of famine looming going back to December those are now coming into fruition uh there are numerous reports coming out of children dying of starvation in in the health system you know when you see that level of starvation and and some of the images
That we’ve seen of you know babies who are skeletal you it’s reminiscent of crises that I’ve worked on in Somalia or Yemen that is now the situation that that Gaza is in and a port uh airdrops are not going to be sufficient to offset that it will really require a ceasefire
And full and operational access for humanitarian agencies to get a handle on where things now stand I I I want to ask you about airdropping Aid as well but but just to go back to the idea of the port I I I mean I can see just myself
Imagining the challenges that would be there obviously Israel would still have a say in what gets in how would the things get in how would it get distributed I mean like is there any way for that to H all to happen unfold quickly enough to make a difference on
The issues that you’re talking about the dire issues not on the timeline that’s required and David Cameron was speaking about this earlier today and said this this doesn’t mean we also we don’t also need Israel to open up ashod port to allow Overland transport to allow access
For Aid groups you know it’s not entirely clear how long it will take to set up this floating peer operation that the US military has talked about it’s certainly not going to be quick and you know on some level this feels like almost a diversion from the things that
Really need to happen and which could happen tomorrow which are the Israeli government Expediting uh you know Expediting Aid across the border crossings that already exist Overland between Israel and Gaza um allowing in uh Aid groups who are ready and willing to move uh Aid through those Crossings
And uh and allowing Aid up from the south as well the UN and NOS have been repeatedly requesting the ability to move Aid up from the south most of those requests for the last s months have been denied by the Israeli government the US uh to go to go back to the airdropping
Uh idea the US dropped uh some aid for the third time in less than a week uh you were head of the US AIDS uh US foreign Disaster Assistance Program and you oversaw these kinds of things I I believe even today though that the Hamas run Health Ministry said I think five
People were killed when when an airdrop went down and the parachute didn’t open which is horrifying tell me why you think airdropping is is not necessarily that the best way Way Forward even when you’re faced with all these challenges so it is an absolute Last Resort and you
Normally only use that if there is a complete physical blockage on getting Aid through other means to the population here the the physical blockage is again primarily the Israeli government and the Israeli military uh and so it is it does again feel like a kind of a way to circumvent the behavior
Of uh government that you know in principle is an ally of the United States and is a partner of the United States and yet here is not allowing Aid to move in a more efficient way and in forcing the US government to resort to these airdrops which are very expensive
Very inefficient and as we saw with the deps today um also pretty risky yeah let let me ask you about uh funding for unra uh Canada is one of the countries that suspended funding after I think it was nine employees were were um in somehow involved with Hamas and and the attacks
There those people were fired another number number of people were also killed um there is a consideration about restarting that funding or making sure that people get that funding back how significant is that like is that really important for unra to have that funding or can the the money not just go to
Other Aid organizations that are operating over there it is really essential to continue funding unra right now unra has long been the backbone of the entire humanitarian Aid operation within Gaza many of the other Aid agencies rely on Unis logistical infrastructure to enable their own distribution um the other un
Agencies have all said that uh even uh msf M Frontier has has said that in testimony to the UN Security Council so if unra goes away that doesn’t just remove unra from the field it actually greatly hampers the ability of the rest of the International System to mount the kind
Of response that we need let me let me end on this you have responded to conflicts uh in all sorts of places earthquakes um yazidis fleeing Isis I understand give me a sense of how this Compares uh what’s what we’re seeing in Gaza how it compares to to other things you’ve seen while
Understanding that every situation is obviously quite different I think what is really stunning here is the speed at which uh famine has come on so I worked on the 2011 famine in Somalia for example that took several failed rainy seasons over uh over a long period and of course you
Know Somalia you’ve got a very high uh Baseline level of vulnerability amongst the population there to begin with here this was not a population that was particularly food insecure prior to the war um there has been no natural disaster that that disrupted their food production uh and it’s happened
Amazingly fast so in five months you’ve got a population that was basically stable from a food security point of view now children dying of malnutrition in the hospitals the the the type of Crisis we’re seeing here is very reminiscent of what we’ve seen in the famine and Somalia what we’ve seen in
The crisis in Yemen a few years ago what is astonishing here is just the speed of The Descent okay Jeremy conc thank you for your expertise on this appreciate it very much thank you
The latest attempt by the United States to boost humanitarian aid to Gaza with airdrops has been met with numerous criticisms. Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and former director of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, says airdrops are not enough.
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