UN appoints a former Dutch deputy premier and Mideast expert as its Gaza humanitarian coordinator
UNITED NATIONS — Sigrid Kaag, a former deputy prime minister of the Netherlands and an expert on the Middle East, has been appointed UN coordinator for humanitarian aid to war-torn Gaza, the head of the United Nations announced on Tuesday.
The announcement by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres follows the Security Council's adoption on Friday of a resolution calling on him to urgently appoint a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, where more than two million civilians are in desperate need of food. water and medicine.
Guterres said Kaag, who is fluent in Arabic and five other languages, “brings a wealth of experience in political, humanitarian and development affairs and diplomacy” to her new position. She is expected to start on January 8.
“She will facilitate, coordinate, monitor and verify humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza,” he said, adding that Kaag will also establish a UN mechanism to accelerate aid deliveries “through states not party to the conflict.”
Gaza's entire 2.3 million population is in a food crisis, while 576,000 people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger, and the risk of famine “increases every day,” according to a report released last Thursday by 23 UN and non-governmental organizations. It blamed widespread hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza.
Israel halted all deliveries of food, water, medicine and fuel to Gaza after the militant Hamas group's Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people.
The war between Israel and Hamas has so far killed more than 20,900 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters among the dead.
After US pressure, Israel allowed a trickle of aid into Egypt, but UN agencies say only 10% of food needs have been entering Gaza for weeks. Last week, Israel opened the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza and freight traffic increased, but an Israeli attack on Thursday morning on the Palestinian side of the crossing halted the collection of aid, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said.
Kaag has been working in the Middle East for years, including in the Palestinian territories. She began working for the United Nations in Sudan in 1994 and has worked for UNRWA and as Regional Director for the Middle East for the UN children's agency UNICEF.
She also served as deputy director of the UN Development Program, led the UN mission to destroy Syria's chemical weapons, and served as UN special envoy to Lebanon until October 2017.
Kaag subsequently became Minister of Trade and Development in the Dutch government, and in 2018 she became the country's first female Minister of Foreign Affairs. She was most recently Deputy Prime Minister and, from January 2022, the first female Minister of Finance.
In July, she announced she would leave Dutch politics due to “hatred, intimidation and threats” that “place a heavy burden on my family.” She told the website Euronews that after becoming finance minister and deputy prime minister, she received many death threats, but the most frightening was when a man showed up at her home, shouting and waving a flaming torch.
“You don't know what will happen, and the safety of your family is of course the highest priority,” Kaag, a mother of four, told Euronews in October. “For me it was difficult, but bearable. It was different for my family. I always listen to them, and their opinion counts more than anything in the world.”