The Dutch politician Kaag is to coordinate humanitarian aid for those in need in the Gaza Strip for the UN from January. The personnel changes follow the request of the World Security Council in a resolution passed shortly before Christmas.
A challenging task awaits the Dutchwoman Sigrid Kaag. Under wartime conditions, she and her team are supposed to facilitate, coordinate, monitor and check aid deliveries to Gaza. It should also establish a UN mechanism to speed up aid deliveries to states that are not involved in the conflict.
Kaag was most recently Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Netherlands. She had previously worked for various UN aid organizations in the Middle East for years. The 62-year-old speaks six languages fluently, one of which is Arabic.
Post is part of the UN resolution
Her future position is part of the Gaza resolution that the UN Security Council passed last Friday after laborious negotiations. The new position was created because Israel is concerned that weapons and gasoline for the terrorist group Hamas could be smuggled into Gaza as part of the aid deliveries.
After the attack in early October that left 1,200 dead, Israel largely cut off supplies to the Gaza Strip and has been attacking the area from the air and on the ground ever since, with the declared aim of destroying Hamas. Only a few humanitarian aid deliveries cross the Egyptian border into the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said more than 20,000 people were killed in the Israeli strikes. The ministry does not distinguish between armed members and supporters of Hamas on the one hand and civilians on the other. A few days ago, Israel announced that it had killed around 7,860 terrorists in the Gaza Strip so far. The numbers cannot be independently verified.
Charlotte Voß, ARD New York, tagesschau, December 27th, 2023 9:42 a.m