Anera is Delivering Aid to Northern Gaza

Delivering aid to the north of Gaza is extremely difficult, as intense security risks limit the amount of humanitarian shipments that are able to travel there. In fact, northern Gaza has been almost completely cut off from aid since the beginning of the war in October.

In the midst of the ongoing war in Gaza, reports of families struggling to feed their children and hunger-related deaths in the northern region have brought food security to the forefront of humanitarian concerns. Residents in the north are resorting to extreme measures like grinding animal feed for survival. Access to essential resources such as water, healthcare, and sanitation systems is also severely limited, increasing outbreaks of diseases.

Anera Responds to Urgent Needs in Northern Gaza

In response to this humanitarian crisis, Anera has expanded our food relief efforts to reach families in the north. As one of very few organizations providing aid in the area, Anera’s ability to respond effectively hinges on our commitment to localization and our well-established roots within the community.

Anera’s dedicated staff in the north, composed of a team of four, spearheads humanitarian relief efforts on the ground. Since February 1, Anera has been providing 20,000 meals daily to families in Jabalia. Procuring food locally from vendors, the team coordinates meal preparation at a Jabalia kitchen, where families come daily and collect their food. The team also sends meals in pots to areas far from the kitchen so people do not have to walk long distances. Given the area’s limited accessibility, Anera often transports food on donkey carts — a testament to the extraordinary lengths to which our team will go to ensure aid reaches those in need.

We are also distributing basic food parcels to families filled with what is available on the local market. They include potatoes, carrots, lemons, cooking oil, tomato paste and za’atar. Each parcel weighs five kilograms (11 pounds). Though minimal, the parcels are helping starving families.

As food becomes scarcer at our vendor suppliers in the north, Anera’s team in southern Gaza is preparing shipments of food to be added to convoys moving north. The journey that trucks take from the south to the north can be quite perilous, and some major organizations have had to scale back temporarily. Just last week, for instance, the World Food Program paused its shipments to the north, citing a breakdown in civil order along the route.

Though the risks are great that the convoys face moving north, with one in six children in the north of Gaza severely malnourished, the need for immediate action is paramount. Anera has therefore just added flour, pasta and rice to shipments that are going north on truck convoys in the next days.

In addition to food relief, with support from Muslim Aid, our Anera team in the north has also coordinated distributions of clothes vouchers to 1,100 people for use at stores that are still standing. They also distributed 1,500 baby diapers and disbursed 1,000 hygiene kits containing shampoo, clothes detergent, body soap, shaving razors and loofahs. These items all come from local vendors.

Anera will continue to purchase and distribute as many food and non-food items as possible from vendors in the north for as long as supplies hold out.

Thank You to the Anera Community

It is thanks to the amazing support of Anera’s community of donors and advocates that we are able to make a tangible difference in the lives of people facing starvation in northern Gaza.

There are daunting challenges that lie ahead. Food insecurity remains a harsh reality for many Gaza families and it will sadly remain so for the foreseeable future.

So, let’s keep working together to prevent unnecessary suffering, especially with Ramadan around the corner!