IOM says only 17 per cent of Gaza's winter shelter needs are covered as the rains begin; 8,600 emergency shelter kits are blocked at the crossings while a strengthening El Niño threatens heavier downpours.
Published 16 October 2026 · 11:32 GMT
On 9 October 2026, the head of the UN migration agency delivered one of the starkest warnings yet about the coming winter in Gaza. Speaking in Geneva, IOM Director-General Amy Pope said nearly all of Gaza's population — almost two million people — still require shelter assistance one year after the ceasefire that ended two years of devastating war, and that winter rains were already beginning. The combined supply pipeline of humanitarian shelter partners, she warned, covers barely 17 per cent of the identified winter needs.
Six days later, on 15 October, the UN Security Council held an open debate on the Occupied Palestinian Territory at which UN officials restated the alarm, with aid still held back by underfunding and Israeli restrictions, including limited access to more than 64 per cent of Gaza's land. This week, as the first rains arrived, the warning returned to the top of the news cycle: UN warns nearly 1 million in Gaza face flood risks as winter approaches.
Pope framed the stakes plainly: "Families who have already endured repeated displacement and devastating loss must be able to face the winter in safety and dignity," she said. "Shelter materials must enter quickly, predictably and at the scale required."
The figure comes from a cluster-level assessment cited by IOM: as of 5 October, about 1.77 million people were living in 1,783 displacement sites across Gaza, and 56 per cent of those sites sit in medium-to-high flood-risk areas — roughly 990,000 people. UNRWA's Situation Report #236 separately counts about 235,000 people in some 400 flood-prone displacement sites, with more than 44,000 others living in unsafe buildings at heightened risk of collapse. Together they represent more than 13 per cent of Gaza's population at heightened winter risk.
The Palestine Shelter Cluster counts 1.98 million people in need of shelter and non-food-item assistance. Almost 300,000 families — about 1.65 million people — require winter-specific shelter assistance, yet current stocks and pipeline supplies can provide only partial assistance to around 52,000 families, covering roughly 17 per cent of needs. More than half of all tents and makeshift shelters in use are in poor or very poor condition: tents are designed as temporary emergency measures lasting six to 12 months, and the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development reported on 13 October that about 90 per cent of tents sheltering displaced families had become torn and unfit after two years of exposure.
Some 8,600 IOM emergency shelter kits — wood, tarpaulin and basic materials — are pre-positioned outside Gaza but continue to be turned away at the crossings, which have determined them to be dual-use items. IOM says it has brought in some tarpaulin and tents, but not at the required scale. Israel cites security concerns for its curbs and says hundreds of trucks enter Gaza daily with aid and shelter equipment; international aid organisations say the supplies remain insufficient. On 28 September, UN Humanitarian Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov warned the Security Council that "restrictions on the entry of critical humanitarian items continue to impede the scale-up of the humanitarian response, including preparations" for the rainy season.
The strengthening El Niño is expected to bring heavier rainfall, which could further weaken unsafe buildings while Gaza's heavily damaged drainage systems leave communities exposed to flooding, IOM said. The UN weather agency says this El Niño could be the strongest ever recorded. More than 3,600 structures were identified in August by an IOM partner as dangerous and at risk of collapse — and just last month, dozens were killed in Gaza City when a war-damaged building collapsed. A separate August survey of 21,000 buildings found 2,638 requiring demolition and 980 requiring evacuation.
How heavy this winter's rains will actually be remains unknown — El Niño projections point to above-average rainfall, but the timing and intensity of the storms cannot be forecast precisely months ahead. It is not known whether the blocked shelter pipeline will be unblocked in time: the 8,600 kits are ready, the funding appeals are open, and Pope has said "the solutions are known, the supplies are ready and humanitarian teams are prepared to deliver" — but access depends on decisions at the crossings and on donor disbursements that have historically arrived late.
Nor is it known how many of the 3,600-plus dangerous structures will fail before any reinforcement arrives, or whether the planned international stabilization force and the reconstruction pledges — the UN, the EU and the World Bank estimate $71.4 billion over ten years for recovery, $26.3 billion in the first 18 months — will move before the next winter.
This is the fourth winter since the war began, and the first full winter since the October 2025 ceasefire was supposed to open the way to recovery. Instead, about 85 per cent of Gaza's residential units have been destroyed, partially or completely. Last winter showed what the test looks like: a December UN report found 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people at high flood risk, and when heavy rains hit on the night of 12 January 2026, at least 47 people were injured and six were reported dead from hypothermia and collapsing shelters, with about 7,000 tents damaged in 48 hours. The Gaza government media office said at least 31 Palestinians had died that winter season from cold or collapsing war-damaged buildings.
The risk this winter is larger because the starting position is worse: more tents degraded, more buildings weakened, and a shelter pipeline covering less than one-fifth of needs — while a year after the ceasefire, Gaza's health system is still being rebuilt from ruins. Flooded camps do not just soak mattresses: rainwater mixing with sewage creates serious public-health hazards, and each storm risks new waves of internal displacement.
Geopolitically, the shelter crisis is a function of the post-ceasefire order: the October 2025 agreement ended major combat but did not unlock reconstruction, and control of the crossings remains the decisive lever over Gaza's material life. Economically, the numbers describe a system running at less than one-fifth of required capacity — a 17-per-cent coverage rate is not a gap but a different regime, in which agencies triage rather than respond. Demographically, the exposed population sits exactly where the war put it: 1.77 million people in 1,783 displacement sites, many displaced multiple times.
Historically, the pattern is the cruel one of protracted displacement: each winter degrades the tents further, each storm weakens more buildings, and the baseline for the next winter ratchets down. Structurally, it is infrastructure destroyed faster than it can be assessed — 21,000 buildings surveyed in August, nearly 2,640 marked for demolition, drainage in ruins — against which an El Niño-amplified rainy season is not weather but a stress test of everything at once. And the deepest signal is the one Amy Pope named: "The solutions are known, the supplies are ready and humanitarian teams are prepared to deliver." When the constraint is access rather than knowledge, the winter becomes a political event before it is a meteorological one.
The second-order effects begin where the rain stops. Floodwaters mixing with sewage in densely packed displacement sites create conditions for waterborne-disease outbreaks in a population whose health system is still being rebuilt. Collapsing war-damaged buildings threaten the crowded sites around them, and each storm that destroys tents forces new internal displacement — families moving from flooded low ground to drier sites, compressing them further and raising the next storm's toll.
Beyond Gaza, the winter tests the post-war arrangements: the ceasefire's aid promises, the $71.4 billion reconstruction pledges, and the stabilization force yet to deploy. Every winter at 17 per cent normalizes the abnormal — and adds entries to the human ledger the Bureau has documented before: the individual lives behind the casualty counts.
The immediate watch is meteorological and logistical at once. The first heavy rains will test the 1,783 displacement sites within weeks; agencies will watch whether the 56 per cent in medium-to-high flood-risk areas hold, and whether the blocked 8,600 emergency shelter kits — or their equivalent — enter Gaza before the season's peak.
Three levers exist, and all three are political: the crossings (reversing the dual-use determinations that keep shelter kits out), funding (donor disbursements arriving in weeks, not quarters), and the broader settlement (debris removal, building reinforcement, relief housing units to move families out of tents). The Security Council's 15 October debate put all three on the record. What happens next is measured in rainfall — and in whether the warnings, repeated for the fourth winter running, finally arrive before the storms do.
Through the Western lens, this is first a humanitarian-access story. Reuters framed the warning around IOM's Geneva briefing: almost two million in need, 17 per cent of winter needs covered, 8,600 kits blocked as dual-use — with COGAT, the Israeli military arm overseeing aid flows, declining to respond to requests for comment. Israel's position is carried as the counterweight — security concerns justify the curbs, hundreds of trucks enter daily — and the implicit question is whether Western donors and the Security Council can convert warnings into access before the rains peak.
Through the Eastern lens, the warning reads as an indictment of the blockade itself. Press TV's coverage centers the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development's figures — nearly 300,000 families facing winter without adequate shelter, 90 per cent of tents torn and unfit, 85 per cent of residential units destroyed — and frames the coming winter as a foreseeable consequence of the war and the siege. In this telling the binding constraint is political, not logistical, and the floods, collapsing buildings and sewage-tainted camps are the winter face of a man-made catastrophe.
Through the Global South lens, this is a climate-meets-conflict story. Al Jazeera's coverage puts the El Niño forecast alongside the displacement numbers: a possibly record-strength climate phenomenon colliding with a population sheltering in tents and ruins. The emphasis falls on the UN agencies' coordinated figures — IOM, UNRWA, OCHA, the Shelter and Site Management Clusters — and on the funding gap that leaves known solutions undelivered. From the floods drowning Thai villages to the overlapping crises stretching development budgets, climate shocks are landing hardest where the shelter is thinnest.
About 1.77 million people live in 1,783 displacement sites across Gaza, and 56 per cent of those sites sit in medium-to-high flood-risk areas — roughly 990,000 people, or nearly one million. UNRWA separately counts about 235,000 people in some 400 flood-prone sites, plus more than 44,000 in unsafe buildings at heightened risk of collapse during winter.
About 8,600 IOM emergency shelter kits are pre-positioned outside Gaza but are being turned away at the crossings after Israeli authorities determined them to be dual-use items. IOM says Israeli restrictions and insufficient funding are the binding constraints; Israel cites security concerns and says hundreds of trucks enter Gaza daily with aid and shelter equipment.
Last winter was deadly: a December UN report found 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people at high flood risk, and a January storm damaged about 7,000 tents in 48 hours, with six reported dead from hypothermia and collapsing shelters. The Gaza government media office said at least 31 Palestinians died that winter season from cold or collapsing war-damaged buildings.
El Niño is a Pacific climate pattern that shifts global weather; the UN weather agency says this one could be the strongest ever recorded, bringing heavier rainfall. In Gaza it threatens to further weaken unsafe buildings and overwhelm heavily damaged drainage systems, turning displacement sites — most of them already in flood-risk areas — into flood zones.
