Gaza has world's worst economic crisis, UN says

Gaza is experiencing the world's most severe economic crisis on record, the UN Conference on Trade and Development said Thursday, citing destroyed businesses, mass unemployment and a collapse in output.

UNCTAD said in a new report that 92 percent of Gaza's economic establishments have been damaged or destroyed. It put daily per capita GDP in the territory at $0.58 and said prices are 274 percent higher than in 2022.

Pedro Manuel Moreno, UNCTAD's acting secretary-general, said the collapse had “wiped out decades of development and generated an acute economic crisis” for Gaza's people.

The agency said the conflict had destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs, leaving more than 90 percent of Gaza's working-age population unemployed. Mutasim Elagraa, UNCTAD's coordinator for assistance to the Palestinians, said industrial activity and agricultural production had fallen by 94 percent and only 1.5 percent of arable land was accessible, forcing “total dependence on humanitarian food aid”.

Israel's military offensive, sparked by Hamas militants' attack in October 2023, devastated the territory of two million people before a patchy ceasefire was announced in October 2025. The offensive killed more than 73,000 people, according to the territory's health ministry under Hamas authority, whose figures are regarded as reliable by the United Nations, and displaced virtually the entire population.

UNCTAD also warned of an economic and financial crisis in the occupied West Bank, citing reduced access to land and natural resources linked to Israeli settlement expansion. Elagraa said the Palestinian territories risk a banking collapse, with potentially immense political, social and humanitarian consequences.