Tag: Forced displacement

Gaza, humanitarian aid obstructed – Exclusive interview with Xavier Lauth, Director of Operations at Solidarités International

Bombing in Gaza © UNRWA Ashraf Amra

Alain Boinet: Xavier, you were recently in Gaza, what humanitarian situation did you witness on the ground?

Xavier Lauth: I was in Gaza at the beginning of July 2025, I found a humanitarian situation absolutely exceptional in its scale, a terrible situation, difficult to put into words and figures for a humanitarian. A shocking situation, hardly comparable. People have been displaced not once but sometimes three, four or five times since 2023. These women and men live with the constant fear of being killed in a bombing, they have not been able to offer their children access to a single safe place for two years. Two years of fear that generates a palpable psychological distress.

An exceptional humanitarian situation also due to the famine and the number of people who are hungry. Exceptional also because the territory left to the Palestinians (territory outside the evacuation order zones) is so narrow that the concentration there is immense and people have a feeling of entrapment. Exceptional also because of the number of civilian deaths, including the sad record of humanitarians killed and the level of destruction. Exceptional due to the famine.

Un enfant de sept ans souffrant de malnutrition aiguë sévère et de déshydratation dans le sud de la bande de Gaza en avril.
A seven-year-old child suffering from severe acute malnutrition and dehydration in the south of the Gaza Strip in April. © WHO – A seven-year-old child suffering from severe acute malnutrition and dehydration in the south of the Gaza Strip, April 2025

Alain Boinet: How do people live in Gaza when access to relief is extremely limited?

Xavier Lauth: People do not live in Gaza but survive there. There are almost no schools left for children, no jobs for adults, so people spend their day looking for food and water, seeking medical care, and trying to stay alive. Foodstuffs and all the objects and goods necessary for daily life are rare in Gaza. The drastic entry restrictions imposed by the Israeli army deprive the population of these goods and also prevent finding spare parts to repair or maintain basic services. The Gazans cope by reusing everything possible but the dignity they show cannot diminish the indignity of this situation. Some no longer even have the strength to get up, I met several men, women and elderly people in various places across the Strip, unable to stand because they no longer eat and leave the little food to their children.

Alain Boinet: The work of the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)” is highly controversial, what do humanitarians on the ground think?

Xavier Lauth: Humanitarians in their vast majority consider that the work done by the GHF does not respect the principles that form the basis of our values nor the modus operandi that govern and guide us. The food distribution operations create uncontrolled gatherings of people in a militarized zone. These sites are protected by armed men who shoot at the population as soon as they believe there is a disruption, which inevitably happens, when it is not the crowd movements themselves that cause deaths. I met many people and always heard the same message from the Palestinians: we know it’s dangerous, that it’s not humanitarian aid, but some of us take the risk to go because our families have nothing left to eat. Unfortunately, there are also deaths during looting of humanitarian convoys, but it must be remembered that Israel bears the greatest responsibility, due to the limited quantities allowed in, the control of the truck routes, and the disappearance of civil order caused by the conflict.

©Solidarités International – Water distribution by Solidarités International

©Solidarités International – Water distribution by Solidarités International

Alain Boinet: What exactly is Solidarités International doing in Gaza, with what team and what means of action?

Xavier Lauth: Solidarités International supports and operates desalination stations (owned, with a partner and with private suppliers) which produce drinking water. SI then organizes the distribution of this drinking water by truck throughout the Gaza Strip (in accessible areas). Tens of thousands of liters of water are thus distributed every day in tent sites or destroyed neighborhoods. In addition to this work on drinking water, teams draw and distribute domestic water from various private wells so that people can use it for other purposes. Another part of the intervention also involves securing full latrines and organizing hygiene awareness sessions with the community to establish barriers to the transmission of waterborne diseases. Finally, our teams were starting small agriculture activities on very limited spaces but with the offensive on Gaza City and the renewed displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, there is no more space. Solidarités International has also distributed hygiene items when available, but it is no longer possible to procure any.

To summarize, we make do with what is available on the ground, we do a lot in terms of water supply and for the rest we adapt, we are far from our standards, there is no safe place for our teams but we continue to deliver aid and that’s what matters.

Alain Boinet: On August 22, the UN declared a famine in Gaza based on a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), what reality did you observe on the ground and what can be done?

Xavier Lauth: I don’t have any statistical data to add, the IPC work is rigorous. On my level, I can only testify. Testify to visible hunger. People too thin lying down and without strength, women crying because they cannot feed their babies, elderly people collapsing from the shame of admitting they are hungry. It is a very harsh situation, especially since the food is only a few kilometers away…

©Solidarités International – Water distribution by Solidarités International

Alain Boinet: What are the consequences of the ongoing Israeli offensive on the city of Gaza and what more can humanitarian organizations do to help the population?

Xavier Lauth: The consequences are terrible because Gaza City was home to a large part of the population who now find themselves on the roads again, having to find new makeshift shelters further south. Having to move again as they did in 2024 is unbearable. The available space is so limited that it is not possible to deploy minimal humanitarian services. Many hospitals are in Gaza City and will no longer be accessible. Humanitarian organizations will adapt again: new locations for water supply points, new sources of supply, support for people’s resettlement… but without materials, with our own teams forced to evacuate… the humanitarian response is not up to the level of the situation.

Alain Boinet: What specifically characterizes for you the situation and humanitarian action in Gaza compared to emergencies like those in Sudan, Haiti, Ukraine, Yemen, or elsewhere?

Xavier Lauth: I have described above some of the elements that make this situation exceptional but as for humanitarian action, it is surely its level of obstruction that is most specific. The obstacles are numerous in all the crises you mention and humanitarians are very exposed but collectively we generally manage to overcome them or mitigate the consequences. In Gaza, funding levels are overall good for humanitarian actors who therefore have financial means but they cannot deliver aid at scale due to the obstructions and blockades. Such a level does not seem to have ever been reached before.

Alain Boinet: How would you like to conclude?

Xavier Lauth: This war will mark, beyond any political consideration, a turning point in the history of humanitarian work. We must continue, try everything to bring everything we can to Palestinians in distress, it is a moral duty. But this effort will remain derisory as long as the fighting does not stop.

Xavier Lauth:

 

Xavier Lauth has been Director of Operations at Solidarités International (SI) since June 2023. He has worked in the humanitarian sector since 2010. After holding several field positions, he was head of emergency responses at SI for four years and director of operations at SOS Méditerranée for 18 months before rejoining SI.

 

 

 

To learn more about the situation in Gaza and humanitarian work on the ground:

 

Don’t shoot the humanitarian ambulance !

Heavy rains flood the UNHCR transit centre in Renk, Upper Nile State, South Sudan. The centre receives thousands of people who have fled the conflict in Sudan, the majority of whom are South Sudanese returnees. ©UNHCR/Samuel Otieno

There are now 120 million refugees and forcibly displaced people in the world, i.e. one person in 69, representing 1.5% of the world’s population, according to the UNHCR!

In 2002, there were 32.9 million.

In 2012, there were 45.2 million.

In 2017, there were 68.5 million.

In 2021, there will be 89.3 million people forced into exile by war and disaster.

At this rate, how many will there be tomorrow?

If we consider some of the major trends at work on our planet – extreme poverty, disasters, conflict – and if we just want to be realistic, there is an urgent need to prepare to help a growing number of victims of war, disasters and epidemics.

The humanitarian raison d’être is to save lives. Current wars, such as those in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, are characterised by their intensity, their multiplication and their duration, and they mainly affect civilian populations, feeding the ever-increasing flow of forcibly displaced people and refugees.

This thermometer of global fever is a key indicator of both human suffering and the destabilising effects of the domino effect, ultimately washing up on the beaches of the English Channel or the Mediterranean.

If this is an urgent humanitarian issue, it is also a political issue that cannot be satisfied with failure!

Russia’s attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 led to the questioning of borders by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is an example that will inspire others. Azerbaijan did just that when it forcibly expelled 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.

This is the risk now facing Georgia, having already lost South Ossetia and Abkhasia. Hamas’s murderous attack on the Israeli population on 7 October triggered a war whose terrifying consequences for the Palestinian civilian population are frightening to contemplate.

Globalisation has given way to a multipolar world in which values, interests and fierce competition are at odds.

And yet, at a time when humanitarian aid is being called on from all sides by a growing number of crises and victims, it is increasingly being asked to do everything, even though financial resources are cruelly lacking and access to populations in danger is becoming more difficult and dangerous.

MSF nurse Anastasia Prudnikova looks after a war-wounded man on board a medical train on the journey from Pokrovsk in the east to Lviv in the west. Ukraine, May 2022. © ANDRII OVOD

The proof? This year, the United Nations, with OCHA and its partners, identified 300 million human beings in danger to be helped. As a result, only 180 million have been selected as worthy of aid. And we’re not even sure we’ll get there, because at the time of writing, at least 80% of the essential funding is still missing, i.e. a total of 46.4 billion dollars this year. And what will become of the 120 million people who have been turned down? Who cares?

Isn’t that simply disgraceful in a world with a market capitalisation of around 95,000 billion?

So let’s put it bluntly. If humanitarian aid is an insurance policy for every life in danger, it is also a vital insurance policy for everyone. Less humanitarian action means more forced displacement, more despair, more radicalisation, more massive and uncontrolled migratory movements, and more hotbeds of conflict that risk exploding in their turn.

At a time when the old empires are aspiring to become empires again, when nations want to protect themselves, clear-sightedness and experience teach us that at the start of the 21st century there are global risks such as climate change, the water crisis (pollution, overexploitation, flooding, drought), the demographic explosion in Africa and the return of war which, even if we favour the “every man for himself” rule to protect ourselves, mean that we have to face up to them and find solutions for everyone that no one can find alone.

Somali refugees and locals dance during World Refugee Day celebrations in Mirqaan, Ethiopia, in June 2023. © UNHCR/Diana Diaz

This does not call into question the democratic legitimacy that peoples and nations give themselves, but it should lead them to contribute to humanitarian life insurance for everyone. And, to take the logic to its logical conclusion, wouldn’t that be fair to all possible regimes responsible for their populations?

Here, the ethic of conviction meets the ethic of responsibility. So let’s not shoot the humanitarian ambulance.

Thank you for your support for Défis Humanitaires (faireundon).

Alain Boinet.

PS1/ If you have an example of positive humanitarian action, you can send us your testimonial which we will publish or use in a future article. We look forward to hearing from you. Send to: contact@defishumanitaires.com

PS2/ Défis Humanitaires would like to thank the authors of the articles and interviews published in this issue as part of our editorial policy, without our magazine endorsing all the points of view expressed.