The New Zealand government is being urged to create a special humanitarian visa for Palestinians in Gaza with ties to this country.

More than 30 organisations — including World Vision, Save the Children and Greenpeace — have sent an open letter to ministers, calling on them to step up support.

They also want the government to help evacuate Palestinians with ties to New Zealand from Gaza, and provide them with resettlement assistance.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘Everyone is susceptible to death’ — Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen
• ‘This is one way we could help’ — World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: More than 100 killed in al-Aqsa Hospital attack

Their appeal is backed by Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen, whose family is living in fear in Rafah after being forced to move there from northern Gaza.

His ex-wife and two children (who have had visitor visas since December) were now living in a garage with his mother, sisters and nieces who do not have visas.

“There is no food, there is no power . . .  it is a really hard situation to be living in,” he told RNZ Morning Report.

If his family could receive visas to come to New Zealand “it literally can be the difference between life and death”.

‘Everyone susceptible to death’
With Israel making it clear it still intended to send ground forces into Rafah “everyone is susceptible to death and at least we would be saving some lives”.

Dahlen said New Zealand had a tradition of accepting refugees from areas of conflict, including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria.

“So why is this not the same?”

He appealed to Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to intervene and approach the Egyptian government.

“We need these people out,” he said.

“Please give them visas; this is a first step. This is something super super difficult and huge and requires ministerial intervention.”

Border permission needed
At the Gaza-Egypt border potential refugees needed to gain the permission of officials from both Israel and Egypt.

Egypt had concerns about taking in too many refugees from Gaza so the New Zealand government would need to provide assurances flights had been organised.

If the government offered a charter flight to bring refugees to this country, “that would be amazing”.

World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong said the government had responded with immigration support in other humanitarian emergencies.

“We provided humanitarian visas for Ukrainians when their lives were torn apart by war, and we assisted Afghans to leave and resettle in this country when the Taliban returned to power. The situation for vulnerable Palestinians is no different.

“Palestinians are living in a perilous environment, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes; children and families starving with literally nothing to eat; and healthcare and medical treatment nearly impossible to access,” Armstrong said.

This is not a detainment camp in World War II, nor a prison in the Holocaust, this is Gaza in 2024. A chilling reminder that history repeats.

A holocaust is happening right before our eyes and the world is silent. pic.twitter.com/Y4SgE1yjji

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) March 10, 2024

Several hundred
The organisations did not know exactly how many people would qualify for such a visa, but estimated it could be several hundred.

“We know there’s around 288 Palestinian New Zealanders in New Zealand, and they have estimated that there would be around 300-400 people that are their family members that they’d like to bring here,” Armstrong said.

“That’s a very small number and as we’ve seen, in the case of Ukraine . . . the actual number of people that have probably come here would be significantly less than that, it’s not like they’re asking for the world. I think it’s quite a conservative number myself.”

She told Morning Report similar visas for Ukrainians and Afghans had been organised within days or weeks.

“It would be New Zealand’s response to this catastrophic situation that is unfolding. We want to be on the right side of history and this is one way we could help.”

She said embassies in the region would need to assist with the logistics of people leaving Gaza.

NZ government ‘monitoring’
Stanford said in a statement the government was monitoring the situation in Gaza.

“The issue in Gaza is primarily a humanitarian and border issue, not a visa issue, as people are unable to leave.

“People who have relatives in Gaza can already apply for temporary or visitors’ visas for them,” Stanford said.

But Armstrong said: “If there is the political will, the government can do this.

“Other countries are doing this . . .  Canada and Australia are getting people out. It’s tricky, but it’s not impossible.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Fiji’s opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party is calling on the government to boost its covid-19 vaccination programmes in the remote areas amid a surge in infections.

More than 700 people in the outer islands have been infected with the delta variant virus, figures from the Health Ministry last weekend showed.

There were 271 new cases and one death confirmed since Saturday.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Fiji covid crisis

Kadavu also recorded two new cases last weekend, bringing the total number of cases on the eastern island to 465.

SODELPA leader Bill Gavoka said the increasing number of infections on Kadavu alone was concerning.

He said the vaccination rollout on Kadavu should be sped up and he urged villagers to get the vaccine.

Eight covid-19 patients on Kadavu have been admitted at Vunisea Hospital, five are in stable condition and three positive cases had returned negative results.

Beqa Island area of interest
Meanwhile, Beqa Island is now an area of interest after covid-19 cases were recorded on the island last week.

This involved an elderly man who died from the virus on the island, which has a total of 48 cases.

The 70-year-old died at his home in Dakuni village and was diagnosed with covid-19, the ministry said.

It said the vaccination coverage for Beqa stood at 75 percent for the first dose and 23 percent for the second dose.

“A health team, comprising personnel from the Serua/Namosi medical subdivision and the CWM Hospital was dispatched to the island on Friday 10 September 2021 to undertake awareness, contact tracing, outbreak assessment, testing, risk assessment for positive cases, vaccination, and delivery of clinical care,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Two cases have since been identified at Dakuibeqa village, bringing the total number of cases there to three.

“Rations have been provided to affected families in Dakuni village, and movement restriction is now in place for the whole island.”

The Fiji Council of Social Services is hoping infection rates in the remote communities drop given there have not been reports from its officials there on vaccine hesitancy, said FCOSS chief executive Vani Catanasiga.

She said FCOSS officers in the outer islands had reported almost a sense of relief when the government medical teams arrived for vaccination drives.

“The big issue has been, however, on supplies – food mostly and communication networks which we have alerted the various divisional commissioners’ offices about.”

NGOs yet to get to remote areas
The restrictions have seen fewer or no presence at all of NGOs on the ground, the child rights organisation Save the Children said.

Its chief executive Shairana Ali told RNZ Pacific that while covid-19 infections had soared in remote Fiji, some NGOs had yet to get their people across from the mainland Viti Levu to these outer islands.

Save the Children organisation is one of them and Ali said this was mainly due to the movement restrictions imposed by the Health Ministry.

“We have not been able to go to these areas because of the containment measures that have been put in place by the Ministry of Health.

“We do have an officer on Kadavu but we are not able to go there. We also haven’t been able to go to the other main island, Vanua Levu, since the outbreak in April.

“These outer islands are off-limits. We are not able to deploy teams. Other NGOs are in a similar situation as us.”

Ali said the government is trying to contain the outbreak in the remote areas, and priority has been given to medical teams.

Cleared for humanitarian work
She said Save the Children had been cleared by the authorities to carry out humanitarian work in the central and western divisions where the outbreak is centred.

Since Sunday, there are 12,517 active cases on the main island Viti Levu with 1474 of these reported in the central division and 11,043 in the west.

Ali said they are “stretched to the limits” in their response efforts on the mainland.

“We have been able to provide grocery packs to families, 1800 families who need the support since April,” she said.

“We believe that families in the remote islands are better off food security wise, than those on the mainland, because they have the land to plant, fish etc.

“We have not received any request for assistance from communities in the outer islands but we are working closely with the Council of Social Services who have people on the ground in these areas.”

As of 11th September, the Health Ministry said 97.1 percent of the target population had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine while 58.2 were fully-vaccinated.

Fiji has 12,814 active cases in isolation and the death toll is at 535, with 533 of these from the latest outbreak that began in April this year.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.