Oxfam logo
The Future is Equal
Oxfam logo in green

News & Media

Building the Gaza Strip Anew: Recovery Needs and Priorities, Palestinian Vision and Ownership

A Policy Reference for Regional and Global Advocacy

Read report – “Building the Gaza Strip Anew: Recovery Needs and Priorities, Palestinian Vision and Ownership” here.

This research provides a clear and grounded vision for building the Gaza Strip anew in a way that is just, sustainable and within a unified national approach (One Palestine).

The framework sets out a viable path, not by recreating a physical territory alone, but by supporting Palestinians to restore family life, communities, institutions, livelihoods and histories, anchored in their inalienable right to self-determination. The conclusions, drawn from years of Palestinian and international agency experience in responding to war, blockade and deprivation in Palestine, are straightforward: any credible recovery framework must be Palestinian-owned, rights-based, reparations-oriented, accountable and anchored in an approach that links Gaza’s recovery to the unity of the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), including the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The report is built on the shared position of leading Palestinian institutions and community voices: Gaza’s reconstruction must be led by Palestinians themselves, rooted in accountability and not focused on physical damage in isolation. Any meaningful reconstruction must respond to the devastation of Israel’s ongoing genocide and address the deeper injustices created by decades of unlawful occupation, blockade and dispossession. True recovery requires restoring rights, dignity and long-denied opportunities, and it must bring back social cohesion, care systems and the community networks that have been devastated.

The study sets out a principled, evidence-based framework for how Gaza can be rebuilt over the next five years. It explains the full range of challenges ahead, including homes and infrastructure repair, restoration of essential services, rebuilding care systems, reconnecting communities, and creating the foundations for long term economic independence. Each part of the plan is shaped by Palestinian expertise and lived experience, offering a coherent path forward that centres Palestinian leadership, rights and sovereignty.

It will require sustained political will, principled diplomacy and a willingness by international partners to reject approaches that are administratively convenient, but legally, politically or morally untenable, including models that deepen inequality, fragmentation, dependency, external control or socioeconomic distortions.

Contact information:

For more information contact: [email protected]

Gaza’s $71bn reconstruction will cost seven times all previous rebuilds combined, and will fail without Palestinian leadership – Oxfam warns

Oxfam and Palestinian organisations hand world leaders a blueprint for Gaza’s recovery — one that puts Palestinian ownership and accountability for Israel’s genocide at its core.

The $71.4 billion needed to rebuild Gaza is seven times, in real terms, the combined cost of reconstruction after every major Israeli military offensive there over the past two decades, a new joint Oxfam report has found.

Even that figure captures only part of what was destroyed — the physical and economic cost — not the deliberate erasure of the social fabric that holds Gaza together, which will take generations to restore.

The report Building Gaza Anew – co-authored by Oxfam, the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) and the Palestine Trade Centre (PalTrade) – offers a blueprint that treats Gaza’s recovery as a matter of rights and reparations, not charity. Built on extensive consultations across Gaza, it sets out for the US-chaired Board of Peace and world leaders how a reconstruction Palestinians lead can succeed – and warns that any model imposed from outside will fail, however much money sits behind it.

Oxfam analysis of successive World Bank, EU and UN assessments shows the scale of the rupture: recovery needs after the 2008-09, 2014 and 2021 wars were around $10 billion in today’s money. Each reconstruction was strangled by blockade, access restrictions and donor shortfalls, then destroyed by the following war before it was finished.

“Gaza has never been allowed to finish rebuilding. A decade after Israel’s 2014 offensive on Gaza, families were still waiting for homes that never came, and then the bombs returned,” said Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International Executive Director. “This is not fate. It is Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade, and the impunity producing the same result, war after war. Every government that funds the rubble but never the reckoning is complicit in it.”

“This is not fate. It is Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade, and the impunity producing the same result, war after war. Every government that funds the rubble but never the reckoning is complicit in it.”

Amitabh Behar, Executive Director
Oxfam International

According to the UN-EU-World Bank Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) of April 2026, Gaza has suffered $57.9 billion in total damage and economic losses, with $71.4 billion required for recovery and reconstruction over the next decade.

More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, 173,000 injured, 1.9 million forcibly displaced, and human development set back an estimated 77 years.

In September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The report argues that governments which armed, funded or shielded the destruction share responsibility for its repair.

The report documents how the war has erased what no damage assessment can calculate – Gaza’s knowledge, care systems, environment, and the community bonds, mosques, churches, libraries, and cultural institutions where social life once lived:

  • Knowledge and memory erased: nearly all schools are destroyed or damaged, universities levelled, thousands of teachers, professors and researchers have been killed, and libraries and archives of Palestinian history lost.

  • A care system collapsed onto women: around 58,600 households are now headed by women while female unemployment stands at 92 per cent. Oxfam’s latest care research finds most women spend 8 to 12 hours a day – some up to 16 – on unpaid care: queuing from 5am to fill 20 litres of water, cooking single meals for hours over firewood or burning rubbish, and nursing the injured.

  • Broken bodies and stripped dignity: around one in four injuries is life-changing, more than 50,000 people need long-term rehabilitation, and an estimated 83 per cent of people with disabilities were forced to abandon their assistive devices. Many have been living in tents or shelters built for 2,000 that at times held 20,000, with as many as 650 people sharing a single toilet.

  • A land poisoned: orchards that took decades to grow, greenhouses and topsoil have been destroyed; farmland contaminated with heavy metals and explosive residue; the coastal aquifer is collapsing; and raw sewage is flowing into the sea, bringing back once-eradicated diseases including polio.

“What was destroyed in Gaza was not merely steel and concrete. Israel eradicated an entire social and economic world, built up over generations, and only Palestinians can rebuild it.”

Mohammad Skaik, Gaza Program Manager
PalTrade

“What was destroyed in Gaza was not merely steel and concrete. Israel eradicated an entire social and economic world, built up over generations, and only Palestinians can rebuild it,” said Mohammad Skaik, Gaza Program Manager, PalTrade.

“Reconstruction is not only a humanitarian task; it is a political one. A plan designed in foreign capitals, however well-funded, would be a cosmetic exercise – simply another form of control over Palestinian land and lives. Our consultations across Gaza carried one unmistakable message: nothing about our future without us,” adds Misyef Jamil, Senior Researcher at MAS.

The report sets out a five-year framework for recovery and rebuilding grounded in Palestinian ownership at every stage, underpinned by rights-based principles and a single national vision linking Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It rejects externally imposed models that sideline Palestinian agency or fragment Palestinian territory, including any international trusteeship over Gaza, and calls for coordination with the EU, Egypt, Arab Gulf states, the UN and international agencies, anchored in international law and protected from profit-driven models of recovery.

Ahead of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and upcoming donor talks, the report sets a clear test for the Board of Peace and every government funding Gaza’s recovery: transfer real decision-making power to Palestinians, dismantle the blockade and restrictions that have strangled every previous reconstruction, guarantee accountability for Israel’s genocide, and commit to a political horizon that ends the occupation and delivers the Palestinian self-determination owed for decades.

“The world has become very good at costing Gaza’s destruction but very bad at stopping it,” said Behar. “Palestinians have now set out how their recovery can actually succeed. Back their plan, end the impunity, and Gaza can be rebuilt for the last time.”

Notes to editors

Download a copy of Building Gaza Anew: A Framework for a Palestinian-led Recovery Before Reconstruction, 23 July 2026.

Methodology of the “seven times” figure: Oxfam compared recovery-needs assessments across Gaza’s major wars since 2008 (smaller escalations excluded), adjusted to constant 2025 US dollars using US CPI-U. 2008–09 (PA National Early Recovery and Reconstruction Plan): $2.78bn nominal / $4.17bn real; 2014 (Detailed Needs Assessment, PA/UN/EU/WB): $3.9bn / $5.30bn; 2021 (Gaza RDNA, WB/UN/EU): $485m / $576m. Combined: c. $10.1bn real. The final Gaza RDNA (EU/UN/World Bank, 20 April 2026) puts 2023 needs at $71.4bn — 7.1 times the combined total (6.8 times on physical damage). The 2012 escalation is excluded as no joint assessment exists. Assessment methodologies and time horizons differ across years (the 2021 assessment covered 24 months; the 2026 RDNA a decade); figures are indicative of order of magnitude. Source: World Bank, UN and EU assessments; US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U. Full source register available on request.

The final EU/UN/World Bank RDNA report estimates $57.9bn in damage and losses, $71.4bn in recovery needs over a decade, including $26.3bn in the first 18 months. Over half of the physical damage was homes (accounting for $18bn).

Figures on the number of Palestinians killed or injured are based on UN OCHA.

Pledges are not disbursements: of the $5.4bn pledged at the 2014 Cairo conference, roughly half of the Gaza portion was ever delivered (World Bank tracking). Of the $17bn pledged via the Board of Peace (February 2026), only a small fraction had been disbursed as of May 2026.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded on 16 September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice ordered provisional measures in the case brought by South Africa beginning January 2024.

The 58,600 women-headed households, 92% female unemployment and 83% assistive devices figures based on the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2025. Source: UN and PCBS.

The unpaid care findings draw on Oxfam’s Rapid Care Analysis for Gaza published in January 2026 (data collected 15 November – 1 December 2025), based on 14 focus groups with 156 women and girls across Gaza, the Middle Area and Khan Younis, plus 13 key informant interviews.

The report offers a comprehensive, evidence-based vision for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction. It draws on focus group consultations with over 70 Palestinian experts, academics and private sector and civil society representatives, conducted in Gaza by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) and the Palestine Trade Centre (PalTrade), alongside 13 expert interviews informing its gender, disability and inclusion analysis.

Contact information:

For more information contact: [email protected]

Thousands forced to use one water source from Ebola treatment site in Democratic Republic of the Congo – Oxfam

  • NGO community-based outreach at just 10 per cent due to lack of funding

  • Health facilities overwhelmed as some operating at over 130 per cent capacity

Two months into the world’s largest Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, up to 20,000 people are being forced to fetch drinking water from a single water source inside the grounds of an Ebola treatment center in Bunia because they have no alternative.

Oxfam staff report that most health centers in Ebola hotspots remain without clean water and sanitation support – leaving dangerous gaps in one of the most important defences against Ebola transmission.

Dr. Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam Country Director for Democratic Republic of the Congo, said:

“Without clean water and functioning sanitation, the basic conditions needed to halt transmission of the Ebola virus simply do not exist. When families are forced to collect water from inside treatment compounds because there is nowhere else to go, this is no longer a public health crisis with a water problem. It is a public health crisis with a lit fuse.”

More than 2,011 Ebola cases have been confirmed with 754 deaths reported across 42 health zones in eastern DRC, according to the DRC’s Ministry of Health. Despite the growing toll, the response continues to dangerously lag behind with around 70 new cases reported nearly every day.

The virus is also spreading beyond the initial epicenter, with health authorities confirming new cases in Tshopo, Haut-Uélé provinces and most recently in Kisangani, a city of more than 1.6 million people extending the outbreak’s proximity closer to two additional international borders, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Contact tracing has now reached 67.4 per cent coverage well below the more than 90 per cent achieved at the same stage of the Ebola outbreak in 2018, leaving a significant gap in efforts to contain the spread of the disease.

At the same time, funding shortages are pushing Ebola treatment centers beyond their limits. Several facilities in North Kivu and Ituri are operating beyond their capacity with some operating at over 130 per cent forcing health workers to care for growing numbers of patients without sufficient resources.

As treatment centers get full, many people with suspected Ebola cases cannot be admitted and remain instead in the community or are treated in poorly equipped primary healthcare facilities, diminishing their chances of survival and exposing health workers and communities to additional transmission. In one case, a woman with suspected virus had to wait for four hours for an ambulance because only one vehicle was available to transport patients.

“Health workers are doing everything they can, but many are working without even basic protective equipment like gloves, and that’s why we are seeing high rates of infection among medical staff across different locations in Ituri. The health centers were not prepared” said Mangundu.

Funding shortages are also slowing down community outreach activities, one of the most critical components to stop the spread of misinformation and improve surveillance. Two months on, only 10 per cent of the community mobilisers needed have been deployed due to lack of funding, a fraction of what is needed to help contain transmission according to Centre for Diseases Prevention (CDC)

“Rumours are filling the vacuum. People are either unaware of the outbreak or too afraid to seek treatment. They are dying at home. Every community death we cannot reach is a transmission chain we cannot break.” added Mangundu.

Oxfam is calling for the urgent investment to restore safe water and better equip health facilities and communities so that families can have basic protection mechanisms. Every delay without action allows the virus to spread further putting more lives at risk.

Ends

Notes to editors

Oxfam is one of the few organisations providing water, sanitation and community engagement support in Butembo, Mongwalu and Rwampara zones. Oxfam urgently needs 10 million euro in funding to restore basic water and sanitation services in affected health zones before the outbreak spirals further.

Oxfam is also supporting community volunteers with training and public information activities to help families understand how to protect themselves from Ebola and to stop misinformation.

Contact information:

For more information contact: [email protected]

Floods Devastate Communities as Oxfam Scales Up Response

Over 1.1 million people across Bangladesh have been badly affected by floods due to waterlogging and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rainfall and upstream runoff since 4 July 2026. Chattogram has borne the heaviest impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, while Cox’s Bazar, including the Rohingya refugee camps, continues to face flooding, landslide risks and damage to essential services.

“This is one emergency unfolding across two distinct contexts,” said Anil Pant, Country Director of Oxfam in Bangladesh. “The floods and their cascading impacts have severely disrupted people’s lives and livelihoods. In Chattogram and other affected districts, families have lost homes, income and access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In Cox’s Bazar, the danger is especially acute, as Rohingya families live in densely populated camps on fragile slopes, with limited space for safe relocation and heightened exposure to flooding and landslides.”

The floods have claimed dozens of lives, displaced thousands of people and damaged homes, roads, embankments, water points, latrines, cropland, fisheries and businesses. Many families have lost food stocks, bedding, cooking utensils and household assets. Thousands remain isolated in submerged communities, while some households cannot cook because they have neither dry space nor fuel.

As of today, the disaster has affected over 1.1 million people across 10 districts: Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati, Khagrachhari, Bandarban, Sylhet, Sunamganj, Moulvibazar, and Habiganj, resulting in 53 fatalities and 39 injuries as of 14th July 2026. Safe drinking water, emergency food, shelter materials, hygiene and dignity kits, sanitation support and flexible cash assistance are among the most urgent needs. At least 3,500 water points and 12,400 latrines the damage to at least 3,500 water points and 12,400 latrines have heightened, heightening the threat of waterborne disease. Recovery will also require repairs to homes and WASH facilities and support to restore livelihoods.

“The water rose so quickly that we could save almost nothing. Our food, bedding and cooking utensils are gone, and finding clean water has become very difficult. We need food, safe drinking water and support to repair our home so that our family can start again,” said Akkas Ali, a flood-affected resident of Statkania, Chattogram.

In the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, 164 landslides and 42 flooding incidents have been reported. Fifteen Rohingya people lost their lives after shelters and facilities collapsed. A total of 9,707 people were displaced and temporarily relocated, while 482 weather-related incidents affected about 43,000 people across 9,463 households. Floodwater entered shelters and inundated WASH facilities, while prolonged cloudy weather left many households without lighting.

Women and girls, children, older people, individuals with disabilities, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and single-headed households face heightened protection and health risks. Limited relocation space, unstable slopes, damaged drainage and overcrowding are making the situation particularly dangerous and the vulnerabilities of the people living there reach the peak.

Oxfam in Bangladesh has initiated its emergency response and allocated BDT 12,065,000 (approximately BDT 12.07 million) to support the affected communities in Chattogram. Working through local partners, Oxfam is conducting rapid needs and gender assessments and coordinating with government authorities, the Needs Assessment Working Group, and UN clusters.

In Chattogram, Oxfam’s planned assistance includes emergency food, safe drinking water, hygiene & dignity kits containing soap, detergent, sanitary pads and oral rehydration salts, sari and lungi. and Multipurpose cash grants of BDT 8,000 per household are also planned so that vulnerable families can meet their urgent needs, including food, shelter repairs, healthcare, transport and livelihood inputs.

In Cox’s Bazar, Oxfam and partners are supporting assessments and repairing damaged facilities within operational areas. Oxfam has also provided personal protective equipment to 100 Rohingya volunteers serving as frontline responders.

“We are already on the ground with our partners, listening to affected communities and acting on their most urgent priorities,” Anil Pant said. “Our initial allocation is an important first step, but the scale of need is far greater. We call on donors, businesses, development partners and concerned citizens to provide flexible funding so that more families can receive life-saving assistance and rebuild with dignity.”

Oxfam aims to reach up to 160,000 people through a locally led, gender-responsive response focused on immediate relief, livelihood recovery and climate-resilient reconstruction with a funding aspiration of 3 million Euro.

Contact information:

For more information contact: [email protected]

Rich countries exaggerating “true value” of climate finance by around $100 billion

Rich countries have again inflated the “true value” of the climate finance they provide to low- and middle-income countries, overstating it by around $100 billion in 2024, according to new analysis by Oxfam. This exceeds the $88 billion by which climate finance was overstated in 2022.

Governments reported mobilizing nearly $137 billion in climate finance in 2024 to help Global South countries cut emissions and cope with the worsening impacts of climate breakdown. While $106 billion of the reported amount was provided as public finance, $69 billion (65 percent) was delivered as loans. Many of these loans are provided on market terms, requiring little or no financial effort from rich countries while increasing the debt burdens of countries in the Global South.

Oxfam estimates that the “true value” of the climate finance provided by rich countries in 2024 is between $33 billion and $45 billion, equivalent to no more than one-third of the amount reported. Only $15 billion to $18 billion was allocated to adaptation.

The findings come just weeks after the Bonn climate talks, where rich governments refused to strengthen the commitment they made at COP30 in Brazil to triple adaptation finance by 2035. Oxfam estimates that even tripling adaptation finance would meet only one-third of poorer countries’ adaptation needs.

Oxfam calculated the “true value” of climate finance by estimating the grant equivalents of climate-related loans and other non-grant instruments, rather than at their face value, in order to gauge rich countries’ real financial effort. Oxfam accounts for the difference between loans at market rate and those at preferential terms, while also considering the overly generous claims about the climate-related significance of these funds.

“New Zealand is outperforming other richer countries by giving all our climate funding as grants, not loans,” said Oxfam Aotearoa Policy and Advocacy Lead Nick Henry. “New Zealand’s climate grants are an essential lifeline for our Pacific neighbours and we need to keep our promise to increase the funding over time.”

“Once again, the richest and most polluting countries are inflating the value of the climate finance they provide, creating the illusion of solidarity while delivering far less than they claim,” said Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Mariana Paoli. “Instead of helping poorer countries withstand a crisis they did little to cause, rich countries are pushing them deeper into debt through loans, many offered on profitable commercial terms. It is a cruel irony: those most responsible pay less —and even make a profit— while those least responsible pay more.”

“What is needed is public, grant-based climate finance at the scale the climate crisis demands —not accounting tricks, not loans that worsen debt, and not empty promises. Grants are lifelines that enable countries to adapt to a changing climate, cut emissions, protect lives, and respond to devastating loss and damage. At COP31, rich countries need to drastically increase grant-based climate finance and finally deliver on the commitments they have made.”

Notes to editors

Download Oxfam’s methodology note. Calculations are based on original research by INKA Consult and Steve Cutts using the latest OECD climate-related development finance datasets for 2023 and 2024. Figures are rounded to the nearest 0.5 billion.

According to the OECD, rich countries say they mobilized $136.7 billion in climate finance for Global South countries in 2024.

In 2022, rich countries overstated the “true value” of their climate finance by up to $88 billion.

According to the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2025, the estimated adaptation finance needs of low- and middle-income countries range from $310 billion to $365 billion per year by 2035.

At the Bonn climate talks last month, rich governments refused to strengthen the commitment they made six months ago at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to triple adaptation finance, which Oxfam estimates would still provide only one-third of the finance needed to meet the needs of poorer countries.

Contact information:

For more information or to arrange an interview contact: [email protected]

Oxfam reaction to the 2026 Bonn climate negotiations

The missing billions: Rich countries sidestep climate finance commitments at Bonn

As the 2026 Bonn climate meetings draw to a close, Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Mariana Paoli said:

“The UN negotiations have once again been derailed by rich countries’ refusal to take responsibility for increasing critical public climate finance. Oxfam estimates that the commitment to triple adaptation finance would, if implemented, provide $120 billion, only around a third of the projected needs for developing countries by 2035 ($310 to $365 billion). Climate-vulnerable countries in the Global South continue to be left with insufficient resources to cope with the harmful impacts of the climate crisis.

“It is a dark irony that the world minted its first trillionaire at the very moment that rich countries were pinching pennies at Bonn. At a time when multilateralism faces an existential threat and rich polluters accelerate the path to climate breakdown, the unwillingness of rich countries to engage meaningfully is astonishing.

“Delegates continued to talk about a new global body to coordinate and accelerate a just energy transition – which gives us a glimmer of hope. However, too many important issues involving climate finance and mitigation were simply kicked down the road to COP31.

“The Turkish and Australian COP31 presidencies must put these items high on the agenda. All governments, particularly the richest and most polluting, must show their leadership in scaling up public climate finance – and do so by cutting out the influence of super-rich polluters and centring the needs of the communities who are at the forefront of the climate crisis.”

Notes to editors

According to the OECD, in 2024, wealthy countries mobilized $137 billion in total climate finance to support climate action in low- and middle-income countries. Of this, $102 billion came in the form of public finance, mostly as loans. Public finance for adaptation amounted to $32 billion.

Contact information:

For more information or to arrange an interview contact: [email protected]