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STORY: UN / GAZA UNRWA ROSE INTERVIEW
TRT: 2:55
SOURCE: UN NEWS
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT UNRWA FOOTAGE ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 14 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE
1. Close up, UN flag
14 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Sam Rose, Senior Deputy Field Director, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“If parties to the conflict can see that norms and frameworks and international humanitarian law can be overlooked with apparent impunity, then this has implications for our ability as the United Nations to operate and be safe in other conflicts now and in the future, sadly.”
FILE
3. Close up, UN flag
14 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Sam Rose, Senior Deputy Field Director, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“One staff member told us that he didn't feel safe wearing the UN vest anymore, so he'd taken the decision not to wear his UNRWA gilet that day, which essentially just makes him known to the population in the school that he's a staff member. He told us that he didn't want to wear it anymore because he felt like it made him a target. There was another staff member who told us that his children tried to prevent him from leaving the house. And when he says leaving the house, he means leaving the tent, but his children prevented him from leaving the house that day to go to work because they didn't feel that he was safe.”
FILE
5. Close up, UN flag
14 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Sam Rose, Senior Deputy Field Director, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“We call on all parties to the conflict to respect UN facilities and respect the fact that these facilities are never to be used for military activities, military objectives. We have no specific information on this school, on why it was targeted.”
FILE
7. Close up, UN flag
14 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Sam Rose, Senior Deputy Field Director, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“There's nothing wrong with the mechanism itself. These are similar procedures as part of a humanitarian notification system that we use across the world that we, as the United Nations uses across the world. And this specific instance, in this specific conflict, the terms and the modalities of that were negotiated and agreed at the start of the conflict. So there's nothing wrong with the system per say. It's just that we're seeing increasing evidence of the fact that it isn't being adhered to. When we have staff members who are cleared to travel to northern Gaza and whose names are cleared in advance, who have been on that route several times before without any problems, all that is cleared. And then when they arrive at the checkpoint, they're subject to a kind of horrible assaults, a dangerous assault lasting several hours. “
FILE
9. Close up, UN flag
UNRWA’s senior official Sam Rose recalled his visit to the school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat in which six of the agency’s staff were killed by Israeli airstrikes.
Speaking from Gaza via a video link today (14 Sep), UNRWA’s Senior Deputy Field Director Sam Rose gave a detailed description of what he saw in the school during his visit on Friday (13 Sep).
He said “One staff member told us that he didn't feel safe wearing the UN vest anymore, so he'd taken the decision not to wear his UNRWA gilet that day, which essentially just makes him known to the population in the school that he's a staff member. He told us that he didn't want to wear it anymore because he felt like it made him a target.”
“There was another staff member who told us that his children tried to prevent him from leaving the house. And when he says leaving the house, he means leaving the tent, but his children prevented him from leaving the house that day to go to work because they didn't feel that he was safe,” Rose added.
Regarding the names of the fallen UNRWA staff, he said that the agency wouldn’t release them until all the next in kin are informed, which is a very difficult task given the situation in Gaza.
The UNRWA senior official also said, “We call on all parties to the conflict to respect UN facilities and respect the fact that these facilities are never to be used for military activities, military objectives. We have no specific information on this school, on why it was targeted.”
On the deconfliction mechanism, Rose said that the issue is not with the mechanism itself, but there is “increasing evidence of the fact that it isn't being adhered to”, as seen in the “horrible assaults” staff are facing at checkpoints after being clearing in advance.
He added: “If parties to the conflict can see that norms and frameworks and international humanitarian law can be overlooked with apparent impunity, then this has implications for our ability as the United Nations to operate and be safe in other conflicts now and in the future, sadly.”
Six staff members with the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, were killed in Gaza on Wednesday (11 Sep) when two Israeli airstrikes hit a school-turned-shelter and its surroundings.
The UNRWA school in Nuseirat, located in the Middle Area of the Gaza Strip, was sheltering around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children.
This marked the fifth time that it had been hit since the conflict began 11 months ago.
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