Could Gaza really be the next India?

YOU THINK YOU'VE GOT PROBLEMS. Pictured below is Lionel Brisson, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza. The avuncular chap has a lively sense of humour, as you can tell by the dicky bow, and always manages to exude a twinkle in his eye.

The average income in Gaza is a dollar a day. And if the poverty line is drawn at $2.1 per day, two thirds of the approximate 1.3 million residents of the Strip are living below it. It's Brisson's job to ensure that the refugee population of around 620,000 is fed, educated and has access to medical treatment, as proscribed by UNRWA's mandate.

"If you add the 70,000 people who have nothing and are considered special cases, that is a total of 700,000 people given food by UNRWA. UNRWA basically feeds half of the population of Gaza," says Brisson, throwing up his hands, "It's a depressive environment - not very good, no?" he asks.

And then there's the problem of getting shot at. "In Khan Younis (refugee) camp, we have schools and food distribution centres 500 metres from the Israeli settlement," he says, "to change a flag which was bullet ridden, we had to have huge coordination with the Israelis or our workers would have been shot. So, until now, we could not do any repairs in areas which were near to the settlements and military positions.

"We have 8,500 staff here and they are all at risk. The shooting and bombing can come in from all sides, Palestinians, Israelis - it's not very good, no?" he asks again, his French accent accentuating the question that hangs in the air.

"Near Morag (an Israeli settlement in Gaza), we had to give up completely on two schools. Our schools have been hit so many times by Israeli fire and we have had four children killed inside the schools."

The list of difficulties goes on, and Brisson explains where the money goes and what the priorities are for the relief operation: the blinding poverty; clean water - the level of pollution in the water is "50 times more than the norm for human consumption."

Unemployment, which "currently stands at 35 per cent and up, but you also have the category of self-employed, which is people running a small grocery or with a horse and cart hauling bags of cement around. If we apply western standards for unemployment, some two-thirds of the population would be below the poverty line, living on $2.1 per day per person. If you compare that with Africa where food it cheaper than here, it is more expensive living here.

"For the housing, we have to start from scratch. A lot of refugees are living in the vicinity of the camps, not just in them. And you have seen the state of these dreadful shelters - it's not very good, no? We try to contribute to changing the living conditions here, including what we call 'camp development'. We will try and support the process by going to donors for resuscitation of the camps."

Brisson's time in Gaza will soon be up. After eight years, he is due to retire later this year and hopes to help build a decent legacy to reflect UNRWA's efforts here.

"We are trying to prepare the Palestinian refugees for the right level to be independent so they can take care of themselves. We (try to) assist this through education and vocational training, we have one training centre in Gaza with 864 pupils. But there are 60,000 people in need, so the needs are considerable. We are ‘reshuffling' our training centre and planning another training centre in the south. But given the uncertainty of freedom of movement, it's not easy.

"In the future, we would like, through information technology, to provide Palestinians with the necessary skills to be conversant with information technology so they may be able to develop like, say, in India. So that they could work in banks or insurance companies and use e-commerce, which is important for things like export.

"We just received a €20 million grant from the EU to put a computer lab in every school and two mobile units for interactive learning. By mobile unit, I mean a computer on a table with wheels," he laughs. "But they will all be networked. We have 194 schools with 200,000 pupils and we double-shift most of the teachers. By comparison, European kids live in a kind of cocoon and yet they always complain - here they don't complain". µ