In a statement issued on Sunday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWRA) said that the blockade on air, land and sea on Gaza, which entered its tenth year in June 2016, together with recurrent cycles of conflict and armed violence, has a profound socio-economic and psychosocial impact on the lives of the people in Gaza.

The blockade has created high unemployment and aid dependency rates: over 80 per cent of the people of Gaza depend on humanitarian assistance, and unemployment in 2015 stood at an average of 41 per cent and for youth at 61 per cent, according to PCBS.

Fishing and fishing-related activities have traditionally supported the livelihoods of thousands of families across the Gaza Strip. However, over the past nine years, the ability of people to gain a living from this sector has been severely undermined as a result of fishing access limits imposed by the Israeli authorities along the Gaza coast.

Fishing activities in the Gaza Strip declined by 33% in comparison to the period before the conflict in 2014. Additionally, according a report published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the number of children aged between 10 and 17 forced into labor doubled within the past five years, reaching 9,700 children, many of whom are their families’ sole breadwinners.