The EU should call for immediate ceasefire to protect civilians caught up in Gaza crisis, says ActionAid

The EU should call for immediate ceasefire to protect civilians caught up in Gaza crisis, says ActionAid 

The European Union must boldly come out to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to bombing targeting civilian and medical infrastructures in Gaza, says ActionAid following a statement by the bloc’s President Charles Michel.  

The statement fell short of expectations of a clear call for the reversal of an evacuation order issued by Israel and for the immediate end to indiscriminate bombing of civilian and medical infrastructure.  

In his statement during the European Council meeting yesterday, Michel called for a plan to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches Palestinian civilians. ActionAid welcomes the call to get humanitarian aid through to civilians but urges more action to protect humanitarian aid and workers and to end the escalation in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel, in accordance with international humanitarian law. 

ActionAid is concerned that the European Union and its member states have failed to make public any plan to tackle the pre-existing humanitarian crisis, which has in the past stood in the way of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory accessing basic needs. 

Cristina Munoz, the Director of ActionAid Alianza – Spain, says: “The EU needs to acknowledge that the current crisis has only worsened these pre-existing challenges. It is not enough to call for civilian protection without putting in place the right mechanisms to allow for this to happen.” 

Ana Alcalde, ActionAid’s Director for Europe and the Americas, says: “If the EU reiterates its support for a two-state solution, the bloc and its member states need to ensure that peace and accountability mechanisms are built, upholding everyone's rights equally.” 

Yesterday, ActionAid sent a letter addressing EU leaders ahead of the bloc’s debates on the Gaza crisis, calling for the doubling of financial and political efforts to allow humanitarian aid to get through to Gaza immediately and to end the forced displacement of more than one million people. 

This also comes as the Gazan Health Ministry reports more than 500 Palestinians were killed in an attack on Gaza's Al Ahli Al Arabi Al Ma'amadani Hospital, many of them children, – with many more injured. 

ENDS 

To contact the ActionAid Press Office email media-enquiries@actionaid.org or call +44 7586107955 or +263 776665065 

Spokespeople available: 

• Cristina Munoz, who is the Director of ActionAid Alianza - Spain and is based in Madrid. She speaks Spanish and English. 

• Ana Alcalde, who is the Director for Europe and Americas at ActionAid International. She speaks English, French and Spanish.  

About ActionAid   

ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 40 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.