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Generation in Gaza faces bleak future under blockade
A year after the 2014 conflict the lives of most people in Gaza have not improved, and an entire generation of young people in the territory face an increasingly bleak future with little hope of jobs, reconstruction or safety, says Oxfam
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year after the 2014 conflict the lives of most people in Gaza have not improved, and an entire generation of young people in the territory face an increasingly bleak future with little hope of jobs, reconstruction or safety, says Oxfam.
The international aid agency says little has been done to prevent another conflict or ensure development to reverse Gaza's economic collapse.
According to Oxfam, unemployment in Gaza has risen to among the highest in the world, with 67.9 percent of people under 24 years old now without work. Even among graduates, unemployment is at 40 percent.
'The lack of opportunities is forcing growing numbers of young people to risk their lives or arrest attempting to climb over the border fence into Israel to look for work,' Oxfam says in a statement on Tuesday.
'The trauma of the conflict and the stress of living under blockade, unable to leave Gaza, has left an estimated 300,000 young people in Gaza in need of psychosocial support.'
Oxfam said the conflict dealt a further blow to Gaza's economy, which had been battered by eight years of the Israeli blockade, which restricts people and goods from leaving and essential construction material from entering. The economy is increasingly reliant on international aid, on which 80 percent of people in Gaza now depend, it added.
"If there is to be any hope of a lasting solution to the conflict, young people need a future they can look forward to, one in which they can study, pursue their dreams in life, be able to afford to start their own families with hope for their own children,' said Oxfam regional manager Catherine Essoyan.
'Gaza needs urgent rebuilding, but its people also need to be able to move and trade, and to have jobs in a functioning economy. Long term peace will require economic development and ensuring people's basic rights, which can only come through an end to the blockade," she continued. (ebf)(+++)
