“History will remember whether this Council acted with urgency, courage and humanity. History will judge. But people in Gaza cannot wait for some future reckoning.”
Oxfam’s Global Humanitarian Policy Lead Bushra Khalidi - a Palestinian mother from Jerusalem living in the West Bank - addressed the UN Security Council in New York today, warning that the ceasefire in Gaza is failing and urging member states to uphold their obligations under Resolution 2803. It was aired live at webtv.un.org/
Full Remarks:
Madam President, thank you for your gracious invitation to brief this council,
I am here as a humanitarian - To speak today as Oxfam's Global Humanitarian Policy Lead. I bear witness to what Oxfam’s colleagues, local partners and communities in Gaza share daily. Palestinians are being denied the basic conditions to survive.
I speak also as a Palestinian mother from Jerusalem, living in the West Bank. My husband’s family is trapped in Gaza. For years, my son knows his family through separation, forcible displacement and loss.
I am one of the few Palestinian women able to access this chamber. I share this not because my story is exceptional. But because it reflects a wider Palestinian reality. Gaza is not separate from Jerusalem or the West Bank. It is governed by the same system of Israel’s unlawful occupation. A system that regulates and denies movement. Restricts crossings. Threatens homes. Divides families. We cannot travel freely. And Gaza is where that system reaches its most devastating expression.
Madam President, the humanitarian emergency in Gaza continues.
The ceasefire is failing. Israeli forces continue to kill Palestinians. Gaza is being carved up again, with more of its entire population squeezed into a shrinking fraction of the Strip. Civilians remain trapped, displaced, hungry, unprotected.
Peace cannot be measured by declarations. It must be measured by whether people can live. Whether parents can feed their children, families can sleep without fear, people can access clean water, patients receive medical care and communities rebuild.
This Council knows the devastation. You have been briefed for almost three years. Knowledge is not the issue. Action is.
Madam President, pallets, tonnage and trucks are often pointed to as evidence of access.
But a truck crossing a border is not the same as aid reaching a family. It does not tell us whether its cargo was humanitarian or commercial. Whether aid reached those most in need across Gaza. Progress must be measured against humanitarian outcomes. Do hospitals have medicine and fuel? Are water and sewage systems being repaired? Can children return to safe learning spaces? Can families sleep without sewage and waste surrounding them? Without their children waking up to rats biting their cheeks? By these measures, Gaza is not recovering.
My colleagues and I hear from people like Eman, a mother of three, living with her family in a cloth tent who says: “Mice and rats eat through the tent and contaminate our food”
Tahrir, a grandmother, walks for hours for water and tells us: “Every cup has become precious.”
Some goods can be found in markets, we’re told. But availability is not access when most families have no income and can’t afford food. Wheat is more than five times its pre-war price. Eggs cost four to five times more. Cooking gas has more than doubled. Basic medicine remains out of reach. Since March 2025, Israel has blocked Oxfam and other humanitarian actors from bringing any goods into Gaza. Limited entry through a handful of approved channels is no match for the scale of need. Palestinians in Gaza are not asking others to rebuild their future. They want to lead it.
Gaza needs systems restored: Water. Hospitals. Shelter. Sanitation. Schools. Electricity. Public services. Protection. Under impossible circumstances, my colleagues and our Palestinian partners continue to deliver essential aid: Water and sanitation, food, hygiene kits. The bare minimum. Since October 2023, we have reached almost 1.5 million individuals.
Madam President, the humanitarian architecture necessary for recovery has been deliberately dismantled.
Credible humanitarian actors, including UNRWA, are blocked from doing their jobs. Despite being audited, transparent, accountable, bound by humanitarian principles. They coordinate, serve people according to need, speak when civilians are harmed or in danger. That includes condemning the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians on 7 October and speaking clearly about the genocide and collective punishment imposed on Palestinians in Gaza. Yet, they are obstructed, restricted, deregistered, killed in shocking numbers. These are the experienced professionals that parties should want in a response. Blocking principled humanitarians is part of a wider collective punishment. When they are blocked, opaque and unaccountable actors fill the vacuum. Prioritization collapses, coordination erodes, communities are left to navigate scarcity and survival on their own.
Madam President, Resolution 2803 was adopted to uphold the ceasefire and address the apocalyptic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
But adoption is not implementation. Seven months later, even these basic objectives are not being met. And implementation is not the ceiling of what Palestinians are owed under international law. It is a baseline. It must be judged by whether people in Gaza are safer, whether aid is reaching them at scale, whether Palestinian rights are upheld.
By these measures, implementation is failing. The Council must hold the parties accountable now. Not after further political negotiations, not after disarmament, not as a reward for compliance. Now.
Are civilians protected? Are crossings open? Is aid independent? Are services restored? Can people move, return and rebuild safely? Those questions require independent, transparent processing at Gaza’s crossings and reporting verified by the UN and humanitarian actors
Not once every six months, not based on announcements by the parties, and not treated as a substitute for action.
If benchmarks are ignored or dismissed, this Council must act by using all available political, diplomatic and legal tools to end atrocities, to end the occupation
Madam President, the drivers of this humanitarian catastrophe are political.
Political choices produce humanitarian consequences: Siege, settlement expansion, denial of movement, obstruction of humanitarian actors, destruction of civilian infrastructure, annexation, dispossession. Palestinians are being denied self-determination. In Gaza, they are being denied even the basic conditions to survive.
These conditions will not end while the unlawful occupation that produces and sustains them continues. While impunity continues.
Member states cannot call for humanitarian relief while allowing economic, trade, business or military ties deepen Palestinian dispossession and need.
Madam President, the people of Gaza do not need another framework that manages their destitution and basic survival.
They need a ceasefire that holds, all crossings open, aid at scale, protection, accountability, support for women and children living with trauma, loss and repeated displacement, the right to return, rebuild and determine their future.
On July 3, we will mark 1,000 days of this war. This month also marks 19 years of Israel’s siege on Gaza. Palestinian voices must not only be heard – they must be centered in every decision about Gaza’s future.
Our lives and futures are too often shaped in rooms where we are absent. States must uphold international humanitarian law, the ICJ provisional measures, the ICJ Advisory Opinion, and commitments made through the New York Declaration. They must protect civilians and humanitarian workers, secure access and ensure their trade, business and military ties do not sustain further violations.
Excellencies,
History will not remember how many reports were filed, or how many meetings were convened. It will judge whether, when confronted with lives and futures being obliterated, this Council acted with urgency, with courage, with humanity.
As teams from countries around the world gather here to play football, Palestinians are asking for something far more basic.
To live, to move, to return, to rebuild, to see children not having to risk their lives to kick a ball. To see our children simply survive another day.
We must be protected. These atrocities must be stopped. But people in Gaza cannot wait for some future reckoning. They are trapped in the present, surviving it, or being killed in it.