UN: Rebuilding Gaza will require approximately 70 billion dollars

Published at: 14/10/2025 09:56 PM

The special representative of the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People (PAPP), Jaco Cilliers, announced this Tuesday, October 14, that the cost of rebuilding the Gaza Strip amounts to approximately 70 billion dollars.

During a press conference for UN agencies in Geneva, Cilliers stated that reconstruction will need 20 billion dollars over the next three years, according to an urgent needs assessment carried out by the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank, the SWI website reported.

Cilliers estimates that some 55 million tons of debris created by the destruction of infrastructure of all kinds must be removed in two years of war.

The total reconstruction of Gaza could take decades and will depend to a large extent on the flow of money allocated for that purpose, which at first will depend mainly on donations from other countries, although the UN stated that it hopes that the private sector will also participate in this effort later on.

According to the updated figures he provided, the level of destruction in Gaza is in the order of 84 percent, although in some parts of the Strip it reaches 92 percent.

Cilliers, whose mandate depends on the United Nations specialized development agency (UNDP), said that the UN has already removed 81,000 tons of rubble in Gaza, equivalent in volume to 31,000 trucks.

Immediately, “most of the debris removal is aimed at opening access to humanitarian actors, so that they can provide much needed help and support to the population of Gaza, although we also help to clear hospitals and other social services,” he said.

As part of the strategy being implemented, 13,200 tons of rubble previously crushed with special machinery have been reused.

This material may be used to pave roads and lay floors in some of the shelters being built in Gaza, among other uses.

Cilliers commented that the reconstruction work will have to deal with two very delicate aspects, such as the presence of bodies that have been left under the rubble, as well as the risk posed by projectiles that have remained unexploded.

Mazo News Team