More than a month since war erupted in the Middle East, UN agencies confirmed on Tuesday that huge numbers of people have returned to Syria from Lebanon “exhausted, traumatized and with very, very few belongings”. Meanwhile, the UN International Maritime Organization said that another vessel has been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, increasing concerns of further delays in transporting lifesaving aid. The Security Council met in New York in emergency session on Lebanon. Stay with us for live updates. App users can follow coverage here

Speaking from Damascus, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)’s representative in Syria, Asseer Al-Madaien, said that the country has seen a “sharp rise” in people crossing the border from Lebanon – more than 200,000 between 2 and 27 March. 

“The vast majority, nearly 180,000, are Syrians, including Syrian refugees who had fled Syria seeking safety in the past in Lebanon and now forced to flee again,” she said.

 More than 28,000 Lebanese also have crossed into Syria. 

Fleeing with nothing

“Most are people fleeing the intense Israeli bombardments,” Ms. Al-Madaien told reporters in Geneva. “They arrive exhausted, traumatized and with very, very few belongings.”

The UNHCR representative said that the agency is preparing for as many as 350,000 to cross into Syria, depending on the course of the conflict.

As the humanitarian fallout continues to deepen over a month since Israeli and US airstrikes on Iran began, sparking a wider regional war, supply lines across the Middle East are already severely disrupted. 

The UN World Food Programme (WFP)’s Director of Supply, Chain Corinne Fleischer, said that the agency is concerned about “all [its] big operations”.

WFP currently has “70,000 metric tonnes of food that is impacted by the war…About half of them are on chartered bulk vessels and the other half are on in containers which are either on route or stuck in a port and don’t move,” she said.

Speaking from Rome, Ms. Fleischer clarified that WFP has no vessels in the Strait of Hormuz but is impacted “by the ripple effect of what’s happening there… vessels being stuck in ports, not berthing to ports, not leaving ports, containers not being offloaded”. 

COVID precedent

The WFP official warned that similar global supply chain disruptions seen during COVID took “four to five months to get back into place once the situation’s stabilized”. 

Shipping costs have surged as carriers avoid the Suez Canal linked to the Middle East war and have to re-route around the Cape of Good Hope. This adds up to 30 days to the journey and has driven rates up 15 to 25 per cent, with fuel price hikes also hitting firms’ bottom lines.

Speaking about mitigating measures, Ms. Fleischer explained that WFP has been “asking for priority cargo for humanitarian operations” as it is the only UN organization with its own shipping department directly engaging with shipping lines and vessel owners. 

She said that the agency has successfully negotiated a waiver for the surcharges that are being put in place by shipping lines and certain ports at risk in the Middle East, which represent between $2,000 to $4,000 per container – a saving of about $1.5 million so far. 

Afghanistan aid delays

WFP is also rerouting cargo, for instance to Afghanistan, where 17 million people are food insecure. 

Earlier this year, food aid sourced in Pakistan was impacted by the Pakistan-Afghanistan war and initially re-routed through Iran, Ms. Fleischer said. 

“While we were [rerouting] to get into Bandar Abbas port of Iran, the war broke out” she explained. “We had to put it in Jebel Ali [port] in Dubai and now we will truck it from Dubai through Saudi Arabia…That adds about 1,000 euros per tonne and of course another three weeks.”

The WFP official expressed further concern about Sudan, with 19 million people “acutely hungry”, as well as Somalia and South Sudan, where operations are buckling under longer lead times and higher costs.

“The financing of humanitarian operations has, since several years, not being where it should be,” she said. “We have eroded any buffer stocks. We’re living from hand-to-mouth in these operations.”

With famine in areas of Sudan “there is no time”, she insisted. “Our operations and pipelines don’t allow for a three-weeks-longer rerouting through the Horn of Africa.”

“No doubt that I have mixed feelings today,” he says. “Bitterness, because I have been at the forefront over the last two years of extraordinary breaches of international law, witnessing atrocities, attacks against the United Nations; sadness, because many of our colleagues have been killed – nearly 400 in two years – that’s never been seen in the entire United Nations history.

“But, also some pride, because over the last two years, I have seen how our staff…have been extraordinarily committed to try to alleviate the suffering of a number of their own communities”.

Aftermath of 7 October

In addition to being the face of an organization constantly berated and accused online of collaborating with Hamas fighters in Gaza, the 62-year-old Swiss national has watched the disastrous impact of the Israeli war on the enclave’s people and his agency, sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, in October 2023.

A high-level UN investigation into the accusations against UNRWA found that of 19 staff members accused of involvement in the terror attacks, one case was found to lack any supporting evidence and nine others lacked sufficient evidence to indicate involvement.

In the remaining nine cases, evidence indicated that the UNRWA staff may have been involved in the 7 October attacks, at which point the agency announced they would be sacked.

Today, the misery and death across the Gaza Strip continues, with one Gazan encounter from early in the conflict particularly hard to forget, despite Mr. Lazzarini’s many years working in conflict settings around the world, from Angola to Iraq and Somalia to South Sudan.

Haunted by hunger with human eyes

“It was a young girl I met in Rafah four weeks into the war and already I saw her with empty eyes begging in fact for a sip of water, a loaf of bread, in the school where she used to be a student. So, the school [that] should be a place of joy and education became a place of misery and shelter for these young girls. And I have to say, I have been haunted by this.”

And although there is a ceasefire in Gaza between Hamas fighters and Israel today, it is “in name only”, he insists, with people still being killed because they do not know where the shifting border is between them and the Israeli military.

“It’s nothing else than just misery,” he continues. “We might have reversed the tide of deepening hunger in Gaza but nothing else. People are still living in the rubble, are still waiting for hours to get some clean water. They are fighting and struggling against disease.”

Children wait to be served a hot meal at a communal kitchen in Gaza.

No real alternative

Amid such suffering, Mr. Lazzarini dismisses suggestions that another body could take UNRWA’s place. “You do not have an existing alternative in Gaza,” he insists. “UNRWA is the only organization which has the manpower, the expertise, the community trust when it comes to public health, education services. There are no other NGOs or UN organizations. But we also know that the Palestinian Authority is not ready to take over these services.”

Beyond the attacks on UNRWA staff and on hundreds of the agency’s buildings in Gaza, its ability to provide key services in Gaza and beyond has been severely limited by a lack of financial support from the international community to match the three-year extension of its mandate passed by the UN General Assembly last December.

Running on empty

Despite austerity measures – including reduced services and a 20 per cent salary cut for most local staff – Mr. Lazzarini’s warning to the General Assembly President that UNRWA “may soon no longer be viable” without hard cash still stands. But political support is invaluable, too, and not just for his agency’s survival, he explains.

“The attacks on UNRWA are not an exception, cannot be dealt (with) in isolation. If we tolerate it for an agency like ours, others will follow. And that’s exactly what happened in Gaza: the UN agencies have been finger-pointed at being infiltrated by Hamas to justify action against them…And now we hear exactly the same narrative, we see the same pattern being implemented in Lebanon.”

UNRWA teams in Gaza City continue to provide medical services.

Israel’s ‘silent war’ on the West Bank

Away from Gaza, the dire situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank facing increasing attacks by Israeli settlers has also highlighted the “silent war” taking place there “in total impunity”, Mr. Lazzarini continues.

In January, Israeli bulldozers moved into UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem and proceeded to demolish buildings there, as an Israeli flag was hoisted atop the UN complex – a move strongly condemned as a violation of international law by the global organization.

“When we talk about, you know, the respect of international law, we have seen that this blatant disdain and disregard – the fact that everything has been conducted without any respect of the rule of war – has also allowed now the spread of a conflict into Iran with no justification to initiate such a large-scale war impacting the entire region,” the UNRWA chief maintains.

Families flee their homes in the West Bank, due to the ongoing escalation of violence. (file)

‘Extreme pressure’

Despite the global turmoil raging around the world, back in Geneva, Mr. Lazzarini appears relaxed. He could easily be mistaken for a visitor in his wax coat, suede shoes, jacket and tie, but clothes are perhaps the last thing on his mind.

Readily conceding that he has faced “extreme pressure” from attacks against himself and UNRWA in the past two years, the top UN diplomat cites his family’s support as one of the principal reasons why he has been able to continue working.

“I haven’t been present over the last two years,” he says, adding determinedly that once he leaves UNRWA, his plans include playing catch-up “to retrieve” his wife and children, as well as writing about his experiences at the helm of a UN agency whose future remains at the mercy of geopolitics.

UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini visits colleagues in Gaza. (file)