After a ceasefire in Gaza, local residents face the daunting task of returning to heavily damaged or destroyed buildings, and shattered infrastructure. DW's Manuela Kasper-Claridge speaks to UNDP chief Achim Steiner.
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00:00People talk about Gazans returning home, but what are they returning to?
00:06Well, as I think your viewers will have seen over the last few months,
00:10the level of destruction in the Gaza Strip is without precedent. We in the United Nations
00:17Development Programme and the Regional Economic Commission put an estimate of 60 plus years of
00:23development lost, 67 percent of the infrastructure either damaged or destroyed. Not just shelter,
00:31but also the infrastructure that provides water, the infrastructure that deals with sewage,
00:37the whole public and solid waste management system collapsed. We are dealing literally
00:42with a situation where most Gazans will return to either a heavily damaged building they cannot
00:49move back into, or simply a pile of rubble. On top of that, an enormous challenge right now is
00:55that across Gaza we estimate 42 million tons of rubble that will now have to be moved. But that
01:01rubble is still dangerous. Not only are there potentially bodies that have never been evacuated
01:06from there, there are also unexploded ordnance, landmines. It's a highly toxic environment in
01:13which the ability to even begin to clear up and to get back to the places that people called home
01:19is extremely difficult right now. So what needs to be done now? Well, I think what you have seen
01:25in the last 48 hours since the ceasefire began is first of all what the Secretary of the United
01:29Nations and many have called for time and again over the last 50 months. Open access, allow
01:35humanitarian aid to come in. We saw over 600 trucks on Sunday, we saw over 900 trucks coming in on
01:42Monday. We have not really received reports of looting, the ability to bring in aid, food,
01:48medicines. The basic things to survive are the top priority right now and that is what the
01:53international community is providing. At the same time, we also need to think about early recovery
01:59and this is where the United Nations Development Programme with its programme of assistance to the
02:03Palestinian people, the UN team and sister agencies have worked with the international
02:09community, the Palestinian Authority to also develop a rapid response capacity on early
02:15recovery. Not only the removal of rubble, for instance, bringing in solar powered water treatment
02:21plants so people have clean drinking water, beginning to create the conditions where people
02:25can start to reconstruct the public and social infrastructure, employment opportunities to the
02:32people of Gaza who essentially have lingered now for over a year in survival mode. But we are still
02:38in the first stage of the ceasefire. What does it mean for what you can provide at the moment?
02:44Well, as I mentioned, we work as part of the UN family. So just in the last few days, the United
02:50Nations system, together with international NGOs, has been providing enormous amounts of
02:58support, humanitarian support, food, medicines, additional shelter materials. But we, for example,
03:05as UNDP, have also had our staff essentially trapped inside Gaza for the last 15 months.
03:13And during this period, we have tried to provide support to local communities. And one area that
03:18UNDP was asked in particular to focus on was the removal of solid waste. It's a public health hazard
03:24and we estimate roughly 220,000 tons of public waste were removed in recent months in order to
03:30create conditions where people could at least not have to walk around in human feces and
03:36essentially broken sewage systems. So what are the next stages? What do you envision?
03:43I think like many observers right now, there is still a great deal of nervousness. Will the
03:49ceasefire hold? Will the steps two and three really evolve? I think the purely human reflex
03:55is so powerful. You saw the thousands of people immediately moving back towards the areas that
04:02they used to call their homes where they have not been able to return to. There is an enormous
04:06yearning for the guns to have stopped, the killing to have stopped, and for people being able to
04:11resume even the beginnings of reconstructing their lives. For us as the international community,
04:16it's a very crucial moment first of all to ensure that the next steps in the ceasefire agreement
04:23and the release of hostages but also of prisoners actually proceeds. That will open the door for a
04:30very significant effort that has been prepared and in many ways is ready to roll out in early
04:37recovery work. I mentioned some examples already earlier on. Basic infrastructure,
04:43helping people to rebuild shelter, creating the public and social infrastructure for people to
04:47even be able to interact with authorities in Gaza when it comes to social safety nets, registering
04:53people, and then also looking at employment opportunities, livelihoods, whether it's micro
04:58small enterprises that we are able to support or whether it is also essentially employing thousands
05:05of people in rubble removal, reconstruction. All of these are opportunities to begin to lay down
05:12a path where people can see a future for them to recover. Does it mean rebuilding a whole society
05:19more or less in Gaza? Well, I think if you look at the trauma that people have lived through, it's
05:24not only the physical infrastructure that has obviously suffered enormous damage. People have
05:31lost tens of thousands of relatives, brothers, sisters, children, parents, grandparents. There
05:38is a level of trauma that we also know from past instances like this that will obviously affect
05:46people for years to come, providing psychosocial support, being able to also help people find each
05:54other again. Remember, many children may be orphans right now. They maybe have been taken care of by
06:00strangers who took them into their tent. There is a lot of work that also our sister agents will
06:05have to do. And then even beginning to re-establish, for instance, the education and health care system
06:11and infrastructure. Essentially, no child has really gone to school in Gaza for 15 months. If
06:18we don't act very rapidly, we may have a generation of at least three or four school years never
06:25returning to school again. Their entire lives will take a different direction as a result.
06:30So this is the spectrum of activities that, first of all, Gazans themselves are looking at right now
06:36and we as an international community, including in the United Nations family, are very focused on.
06:42Do you have sufficient resources to do that what you just described?
06:48I think for the initial humanitarian support right now, there have been significant pledges. But as
06:54you saw, when you start moving 600, 800, 1,000 trucks per day into Gaza, no, we will, through the
07:03various channels, need more resources, no question about it. But that's for the humanitarian immediate
07:09support and aid. It's life-saving, so to speak. The billions of dollars that will need to be
07:14mobilized for even early recovery work and then in the longer term reconstruction will be in the
07:20tens of billions. And it is indeed an enormous challenge to be able to mobilize these resources.
07:27The international community will obviously be called upon to step forward. The private sector
07:32can also invest, so to speak, in that recovery and reconstruction work. But it is an enormous
07:40uphill struggle to mobilize the resources for this huge early recovery and reconstruction
07:46work over the next years. So do you see countries being ready to mobilize these kind of resources,
07:52billions and billions of dollars, for rebuilding Gaza? I think many would, first of all, in view
07:59of the fact that this conflict has not only created enormous suffering and trauma in the region,
08:06but has affected countries and politics and communities across the world. I think many
08:12countries are ready to step up in order to defuse, first of all, and de-risk the likelihood that
08:19fighting resumes, bombardments resume. That inevitably involves stepping up and helping to
08:26also invest in the reconstruction and the rehabilitation of infrastructure in Gaza.
08:31I would not go so far as saying countries are simply ready to step up and finance that scale
08:38of investment. But I think for the initial programs, the signals are relatively positive
08:43that countries are ready to step up. And we've heard many of them also make public statements to that end.
08:49What about the neighboring countries like Lebanon? What can they do or should do?
08:54Well, I think if you look to Lebanon right now, Lebanon is preoccupied with its own
08:59recovery and early recovery and reconstruction process. It has now a new government, so there is
09:05a perspective that Lebanon itself, which has been in a perennial economic crisis and governance crisis,
09:11can now focus on a way forward. And obviously, I think there is a lot of expectation that also
09:18with developments in Syria, the enormous burden that Lebanese people and Lebanon carried in hosting
09:26Syrian refugees may now actually become less of a challenge, because many Syrians,
09:33if indeed developments in Syria hold, will likely return to their home country.
09:39So there is an extraordinary amount of movement and change happening in the region.
09:44I think we should not be presumptuous on any front. All of these processes are vulnerable
09:49and volatile. They need a lot of support, and particularly from the perspective of the United
09:55Nations and the international community, a proactive approach to supporting the positive
10:01developments that have happened, and in particular to view these as a unique opportunity.
10:08Where do you see Europe in this process? Does Europe have an important role?
10:14Oh, I think, first of all, factually speaking, Europe is a very key partner to many countries
10:21in the region. It was heavily engaged not only in the traumatic conflict that happened
10:28over the last 15 months with the occupied Palestinian territories,
10:32it is also a partner that has financed with billions of euros the refugee response plans
10:39in neighboring countries, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey. It is a potential partner also for
10:46recovery and reconstruction. Let us remember, more than 90 percent of Syria's population today
10:51lives below the poverty line, and the amount of economic reconstruction and rebuilding of
10:58economies and livelihoods is equally enormous in the region as such. But let us be very clear,
11:07if people have hope, if they have perspective, if they can start rebuilding their lives,
11:11this is probably the best return on investment in terms of stabilizing a region and ultimately
11:17enabling people to move away from the specter of conflict, division, and very polarized politics.
11:23Where do you see Israel's role in the whole process? What do you expect?
11:28I think Israel, as in any conflict, has to be a good-faith negotiating partner. I think the
11:35developments that will unfold over the coming weeks, first of all with respect to the ceasefire
11:40in Gaza, but also to finding a way forward in terms of the two-state solution pathway,
11:47all of this will no doubt play out. And as we know, there are domestic politics
11:53and there are international politics. I think the best hope the region has is that
11:57everybody recognizes that there must be a way forward that takes us beyond of where we have been
12:04essentially paralyzed for the past 10 years or somewhat say decades.
12:09Thank you very much, Achim Steiner, for the interview.