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In Gaza, ‘every hour counts’, says UNRWA chief in ceasefire plea
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, repeated his urgent call for a ceasefire in Gaza on Friday, amid increased military Israeli activity in the enclave’s largest city.
“Every hour today counts, the more we wait, the more people will die,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, who highlighted the many lethal dangers confronting Gazans today.
“Either they will die because of the military operation under bombardment, or they die because they could not be assisted in time and they are silently dying because of hunger,” he told UN News in Geneva.
“They’re even dying because they try to desperately seek for food going to these infamous distribution places of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” Mr. Lazzarini said, referring to the controversial non-UN aid hubs where supplies are distributed to those able to walk to them and carry away lifesaving relief.
According to the UN human rights office, OHCHR, since 27 May and until 17 August, 1,857 Palestinians have been killed “while seeking food”, including 1,021 killed near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites. Another 836 Palestinians have been killed on supply truck routes; “most of these killings appear to have been committed by the Israeli military”, OHCHR noted.
The UNRWA chief also echoed the UN Secretary-General’s appeal on Thursday for an immediate halt to the Israeli military escalation in Gaza City and the release of all hostages taken in Hamas-led terror attacks that sparked the war in October 2023.
The violence “has to stop immediately”, Mr. Lazzarini said. “People living in Gaza are now in a state of famine which has been declared about a week ago and now we are talking about a major military offensive, with a total evacuation of an extremely weakened population.”
Repeated mass displacement has become commonplace in Gaza, including for one UNRWA worker in the north of the enclave, reportedly uprooted for the nineteenth time and forced to seek shelter, the agency said earlier this week.
The problem is that nowhere is safe in Gaza, Mr. Lazzarini insisted, responding to reports of further bombing in the coastal shelter of Al Mawasi near Khan Younis.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced to Al Mawasi have little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents.
Despite this dire situation, “there is no other place than Al Mawasi for the people there to go because the rest of the Gaza Strip are in a military zone with active fighting taking place,” he explained. “But even Al Mawasi…is not safe for the people because it can also be the targeting of a bombing. It's just unspeakable.”
Despite ongoing Israeli restrictions on the amount of aid reaching Gaza reported by UN aid coordinators, the UNRWA chief insisted that the agency’s staff are still providing lifesaving support to Gazans.
In addition to dispensing at least 15,000 medical consultations a day at UNRWA primary health centres, the UN agency screens children for acute malnutrition, manages waste management to prevent communicable disease spread and works to give access to safe drinking water. Some 100,000 people still shelter in its schools.
“Where UNRWA cannot function for the time being is when it comes to food distribution, to the delivery of lifesaving items to the people, because we have been constrained and prevented to bring anything since the ceasefire broke down in March this year,” Mr. Lazzarini explained.
STORY: Gaza update – Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA
TRT: 2’37”
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/ NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 29 AUGUST 2025 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Speaker:
- Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA
SHOTLIST
- Exterior wide shot: Palais des Nations, flag alley.
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA: “It has to stop immediately. As you know, people living in Gaza are now in a state of famine which has been declared about a week ago and now we are talking about a major military offensive, with a total evacuation of an extremely weakened population.”
- Wide, Philippe Lazzarini sitting in UNTV Geneva studio.
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA: “We have in Gaza nearly one million people between the city and the northern Governorate who basically have nowhere to go, have no resource even to move.”
- Medium, pan, UNTV Geneva studio monitors showing Philippe Lazzarini being interviewed.
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA: “If the military operation takes place in the middle of this population this will add again even more suffering, kill even more people and it’s a total, total disaster.”
- Medium-wide, trucking, Philippe Lazzarini being interviewed.
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA: “Today there is no other place than Al Mawasi for the people there to go because the rest of the Gaza Strip are in a military zone with active fighting taking place. But even Al Mawasi, as I said, is not safe for the people because it can also be the targeting of a bombing. It's just unspeakable.”
- Medium, UNTV Geneva studio control room monitors.
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA: “Every hour today counts. The more we wait, the more people will die. Either they will die because of the military operation under bombardment, or they die because they could not be assisted in time and they are silently dying because of hunger, or they’re even dying because they try to desperately seek for food going to these infamous distribution places of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation."
- Wide, UN Geneva flag alley.
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, UNRWA: “Where UNRWA cannot function for the time being is when it comes to food distribution, to the delivery of lifesaving items to the people, because we have been constrained and prevented to bring anything since the ceasefire broke down in March this year.”
- Wide, UN Geneva flag alley.
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New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
- Past seven years have seen abnorfmal river flows
- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
- Widespread glacier loss across all regions for fourth consecutive year
- Asia and Africa are regions most affected by water-related disasters
- Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard-hit areas
Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
“Some glacier loss is inevitable, but total loss of glaciers is not yet inevitable,” she said, pointing to emissions reductions as central to limiting future losses.
Preparing for moving baselines
The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
ends