The Gaza crisis demands a humanitarian reckoning

Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, once said, ‘I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.’ Today, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza speaks to more than its immediate reality – it embodies a deeper rupture in our shared human story. We cannot give up on Gaza, because the lives of Palestinians matter and because what is unfolding there challenges the very foundations of our humanity, including the rules-based international order we once held so sacred. The humanitarian and human rights consequences of the Israeli military operation in Gaza are staggering. According to the United Nations (UN), about 90% of Gaza’s 2.1 million people have been displaced during the war and many have been displaced 10 times or more. Between 7 October 2023 and 25 June 2025, at least 56,156 Palestinians have been killed and 132,239 have been injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Over the past month, I have spoken with humanitarians, philanthropists and academics, all deeply engaged in the Gaza humanitarian response either in their professional capacity or because they have families there. A recurring theme in every conversation has been this: the danger extends beyond the flagrant violations of international law. The threat is existential – not only for the people of Gaza but for all of us. We are losing our moral compass, and the fragile reassurance once offered by international humanitarian and human rights law is being steadily dismantled.

As the humanitarian sector undergoes a profound period of reckoning and transformation, the crisis in Gaza must serve as a pivotal turning point for the humanitarian sector, one even more consequential than recent aid cuts and ongoing calls for restructuring and reform. In this context, I offer three key insights from the crisis that carry urgent and far-reaching implications for the broader humanitarian community.

Rethinking protection

We must rethink the role of international and local humanitarian actors in providing protection without abrogating the fundamental responsibility of states to provide it.

A few years ago, I led a study that looked at the intersections between humanitarian protection and peace, which highlighted the crippling power gaps between international and local protection, as well as between human rights and humanitarian approaches to protection. The humanitarian sector is yet to figure out how to engage with protection effectively. Israeli aid restrictions have meant that the UN has been unable to provide assistance or meaningfully influence or halt the ongoing violence in Gaza. The crisis underscores the urgent need for a rethink of protection beyond the UN system. Everyone has a role to play in protecting civilians from harm and this includes witnessing and documenting violations more intentionally as well as ensuring that humanitarian aid is delivered safely to the affected population – a role that has been alarmingly violated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has put military personnel in charge of aid delivery.

This is not a new call. Atrocity prevention experts like Kate Ferguson and Fred Carver have called for the devolution of the Responsibility to Protect from UN agencies to local and national actors in order to address the pathologies of atrocities and war crimes, which are different from other forms of violence in that they are sometimes motivated by identity-based grievances. However, this must not obscure or dilute the legal and moral responsibility of Israel, as the occupying power, to protect the civilian population in Gaza. As discussions about the humanitarian reset expand, a Humanitarian Policy Group paper cautions against a backslide in effective protection action. It calls on humanitarians to work towards strengthening civilian safety in line with the priorities of affected people.

A sector under strain

We must confront the difficult question of whether the current humanitarian architecture – grounded in humanitarian principles – remains fit for purpose in today’s complex world.

More than ever before, the Gaza crisis has shaken confidence in the robustness of the humanitarian sector, and its inherent goodness and capacity to enact reform, however modest. Humanitarian principles – humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence – must remain the cornerstone of our response. But in the face of protracted and politically charged crises like that in Gaza, we must also ask: how can these principles be better operationalised in today’s realities? The outsourcing of aid delivery to private actors, such as the GHF, raises troubling questions about accountability, transparency and adherence to core humanitarian values. What kind of world allows people to be gunned down while reaching for food? Five hundred Palestinians seeking aid have been brutally killed in recent weeks after Israeli armed forces opened fire at them, repeatedly.

I spoke to Rania Abdelnaeem, Manager of the Welfare Innovation Lab in Egypt, who has been conducting research in Gaza in recent months to understand the full breadth of the humanitarian crisis there. She highlighted that what stood out for her was not ‘just the destruction of hospitals or the collapse of food systems, but what this war has done to how Palestinians see their future. […] The hardest part of all this was realising how quickly people’s lives get reduced to numbers and how names, stories, dreams just disappear into footnotes. Every statistic we cite in our research, every bombed hospital, every child too weak to cry [is] someone’s whole world falling apart.’

There is a profound sense of betrayal in Gaza today – a reflection of deep systemic failure. It is worth asking: what could the humanitarian sector, both international and regional, have done differently? More importantly, as we look ahead to UN80 and the possibility of a humanitarian reset, is there an opportunity to fundamentally reshape the sector? Can we envision a humanitarian architecture that stands more clearly and deliberately alongside human rights and peacebuilding actors – one that is truly responsive to the needs and dignity of affected populations, including the people of Gaza?

Beyond service delivery

We must reconsider the role of humanitarian actors not only as aid providers, but as active advocates for change.

Our world is becoming increasingly unsafe. Crises in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Gaza and other places are testament to the shattering of the international order as we know it. It is becoming clear that humanitarian actors can no longer be effective in their roles by focusing on aid delivery alone. In a conversation with Naila Farouky, CEO of the Arab Foundations Forum (a non-profit membership-based association of philanthropic organisations, donors, funders, and other actors in the Arab region), she described the urgency for regional and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to act as ‘gate openers not gatekeepers’ and to build an ‘alternative trust-based system that facilitates [and does not hoard] power’. Naila and other NGO leaders from the region argued that international and regional NGOs must go beyond service delivery. In Gaza and similar crises, their role as advocates for the rights and dignity of affected populations is more critical than ever. Speaking truth to power, bearing witness, and challenging political inaction are integral to humanitarian action.

Conclusion

The crisis in Gaza is not only a test of our humanitarian resolve but a mirror reflecting the fragilities of our systems and values. We cannot afford to give up on Gaza – nor on the principles and responsibilities that define humanitarianism itself. Recommitment, reflection and reform are essential.

I’ll end with final words from Palestinian author Atef Abu Saif reminding us of the very real lives behind the devastating numbers coming from Gaza:

‘I do not want to be a small number in a large one, a part of the data […] None of the killed or injured wanted it […] Nobody will uncover the beauty of the lives they led – the beauty that vanishes with every attack, disappears behind this thick, ugly curtain of counting.’

Dr Sherine El Taraboulsi-McCarthy is a humanitarian and development expert and non-profit executive.