Humanitarian Needs Status Report: Gaza Strip

1 Executive summary

• Shelter is by far the first need. 39.9% of needs ask for a tent, shelter or housing, and 37.8% are formally filed under “Housing”. 86.2% of needs come from families living outside their homes.
• Needs come together, not alone. 43.7% of needs combine two or more basic needs in the same request (for example tent + food + treatment), and 27.8% of families submitted more than one need.
• Income has almost disappeared. Direct cash assistance is the second most requested need (26.6%), and the texts repeatedly mention having no income and no breadwinner.
• Children are at the centre of the need. 13.7% of needs mention infant formula or diapers, and a quarter of all needs (25.5%) come from orphan households.
• An almost complete funding gap. The total requested is $690,580; only 0.12% of it has been covered through the platform, and 99.4% of needs have received no recorded funding.
• A crisis across the whole Strip. 48.4% of needs come from Gaza & North Gaza, but the kind of need is very similar in all three regions (the differences are mostly within the margin of error). The regions differ in the volume of need, not its nature.

2 Methodology and scope

Data source: “needs” records on the Khaima Platform. These are requests submitted by registered, verified families. Each has a title, a free-text description (the family's story), a category, a priority and a requested amount, plus later updates the family posts. The analysis covers every approved, published need up to 6 October 2026: 1,523 needs from 1,043 families, with 248 text updates.

Family attributes: each need was linked to the family's region, housing status and father status as recorded in the family file.

Text analysis: the titles, descriptions and updates were classified automatically into 12 need types and 11 vulnerability indicators, using a curated Arabic keyword dictionary after normalising spelling (hamza forms, taa marbuta and digits). One need can carry more than one type. These shares are minimum estimates, because they only count what a family stated in writing.

Limits of generalisation: the sample is self-selected (families who chose to submit a request through a mobile app) and is not a random sample of the Strip's population. It represents displaced families with access to digital platforms better than other groups. At 95% confidence, the margin of error for any share in this report is at most ±2.5 percentage points. Most needs were submitted in March and April 2026 (when the service launched), so they describe that period most accurately.

3 Geographic distribution

Almost half of all needs come from Gaza & North Gaza (48.4%), followed by Khan Younis & Rafah (30.9%) and the Middle Area (19.5%). This reflects the scale of destruction in the north and the return of displaced families to destroyed areas, alongside the dense displacement in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis.

4 Housing and shelter

The texts also show the tents themselves wearing out: 75 needs describe the tent as worn, torn or unable to protect from heat and cold, and 138 needs explicitly mention the family home being destroyed or demolished.

Type of need by housing status

Shares of all needs in each housing group. One need can carry more than one type.

5 What families need

5.1 Category chosen by the family

94.4% of needs were marked “high priority”, which shows that families see their need as urgent by nature. 26.9% were filed under “Other”, which is why the text analysis below was used to identify the actual need.

5.2 Actual need from the request texts

6 Vulnerability indicators

Besides the type of need, the texts reveal conditions that make a family more vulnerable. The shares below are minimum estimates, because a condition is only counted when stated.

Orphan households

According to the registered family files, 389 needs (25.5%) come from families whose father has died. Their needs differ from other families': 19.0% ask for monthly sponsorship, compared with 0.8% of other families, and 37.5% ask for shelter.

Indicators by region

7 Comparing the regions

Shares of all needs in each region.

The shares of each type of need are close across the three regions: shelter ranges from 38.7% to 41.5%, and cash assistance from 26.4% to 27.3%. The main differences are a higher share of orphans in Khan Younis & Rafah (14.9%), and higher shares of no income (10.4%), stated displacement (8.1%) and food requests (20.9%) in the Middle Area, while Gaza & North Gaza has the largest number of needs. Resources should therefore be distributed by the number of families in each area, with a broadly uniform package of assistance.

8 The funding gap

Amounts were converted from the platform's “point” unit to US dollars at the point value set in the donation settings (1 point = 1 US dollar). The maximum per need is 700 US dollars. Funding covers only what was recorded through the platform; it excludes in-kind aid and distributions made by partner organisations outside the donation system.

The average need is $453, with housing needs the highest (median $600). 593 needs (38.9%) ask for the maximum allowed (700 US dollars), so these families' real need probably exceeds what the platform lets them request. Although the needs draw noticeable engagement (3,931 likes), this has not turned into funding: reaching donors, not raising awareness of the need, is the bottleneck.

9 Voices from the field

Excerpts from the families' stories as written in their requests, translated from Arabic, with names and any identifying details removed:

“I am living in a worn-out tent, my wife is eight months pregnant, and we urgently need a tent.”

— Father of a displaced family

“I am a pregnant widow with four orphaned children. My home was completely destroyed and I live with no shelter and no income.”

— Mother of orphans

“I am a young woman with a mobility disability, displaced in Al-Mawasi. I need an electric wheelchair; I have not been outside for a year.”

— Khan Younis – Al-Mawasi

“We have no source of light inside the tent, and my children also need it to study at night.”

— Family in a tent shelter

“I have two children who need diapers and healthy food, and one of them suffers from malnutrition.”

— Mother of two

“We live in a worn-out tent that protects us from neither the summer heat nor the winter cold. We have been displaced since the start of the war.”

— Gaza – Al-Rimal

10 Generalising: estimates per 1,000 families

Applying the sample shares with 95% confidence intervals gives the expected situation for every 1,000 displaced families requesting assistance in conditions similar to the sample:

This table can be used for initial quantity planning (for example tents, food parcels or infant formula per thousand families), to be updated by field surveys at implementation. Estimates based on the request texts are minimum estimates.

11 Recommendations

1. Make shelter the top priority: replace worn-out tents and provide weather-resistant tents and tarpaulins before winter, prioritising families with no shelter (5.9%) and those living in damaged homes.
2. Adopt integrated assistance packages instead of single-item aid, since 43.7% of needs combine more than one basic need (shelter + food + treatment).
3. Expand direct cash assistance for families with no income, as the most flexible way to meet several needs at once, with transparent verification and distribution.
4. A dedicated track for infants and children covering infant formula, diapers and therapeutic nutrition, with stated cases of malnutrition referred to health providers.
5. Sponsorship programmes for orphan households, which account for a quarter of all needs, linked to education and psychosocial support.
6. A targeted health response for people with chronic illness, war injuries and disabilities (assistive devices such as wheelchairs, and chronic medication).
7. Distribute resources by number of families, since the kind of need is similar across regions, with more weight for Gaza & North Gaza by volume.
8. Close the funding gap through institutional partnerships that use the platform's verified data to direct funding to existing needs.
9. Improve data quality: split the “Other” category into more precise categories and add structured fields for household size and type of need, to make future reports more accurate.

Annex: detailed tables

A. Types of need extracted from the texts

B. Vulnerability indicators

C. Needs per family

Source of all data: Khaima Platform database, approved needs up to 6 October 2026. Reference KH-RPT-2026-10-001. Translation of the Arabic original.