UN-EU report: $71.4B to rebuild Gaza Strip

Comprehensive assessment of regional destruction

A joint report released on 20 April 2026 by the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank has provided the most detailed technical baseline yet for the recovery of the Gaza Strip. Known formally as the Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA), the document concludes that $71.4 billion is required to facilitate reconstruction over a ten-year horizon. This figure reflects the total cost of restoring housing, essential services, and economic functionality, though the report acknowledges that the full scale of destruction may push long-term investment requirements even higher. Researchers utilized satellite imagery and ground-level data collected across 24 months of conflict - from October 2023 through October 2025 - to quantify the physical wreckage, noting that the intensity of the damage has fundamentally altered the urban landscape.

The assessment distinguishes between two overlapping categories of loss: $35.2 billion in physical infrastructure damage and a further $22.7 billion in economic and social losses, including lost income, displacement costs, and the collapse of productive activity. Crucially, the report sets an early priority figure of $26.3 billion required within the first 18 months alone - funds needed to restore essential services, rebuild critical infrastructure, and begin stabilizing the economy before longer-horizon reconstruction can proceed.

Impact on human development and infrastructure

The RDNA characterizes the situation as a catastrophic collapse of human development, quantifying the setback at 77 years - a figure derived from the projected fall of Gaza's Human Development Index (HDI) to 0.339, the lowest level ever recorded for the territory. Beyond the physical rubble, the institutional frameworks for education and healthcare have been severely dismantled. More than 50 percent of hospitals are non-functional, and nearly all schools across the territory have been destroyed or damaged. The restoration of basic human services will require a coordinated international response that exceeds traditional humanitarian aid models.

Critical infrastructure has been hit across every sector. The electrical grid, already under significant strain prior to the conflict, requires a near-complete overhaul rather than simple repairs. Water desalination and sewage treatment facilities have sustained damage that poses immediate risks to public health, including groundwater contamination. The hardest-hit sectors, as identified by the RDNA, span housing, health, education, commerce, and agriculture - a breadth of destruction that complicates any sequenced recovery effort.

The population displacement crisis compounds these challenges. More than 1.9 million people have been displaced, many of them multiple times, with over 60 percent of Gaza's population having lost their homes entirely.

The housing crisis at the center of reconstruction

Housing is the single most severely affected sector in the assessment. The RDNA documents that more than 371,888 housing units have been destroyed or damaged - a scale of residential loss that accounts for approximately $18 billion of total physical damage. Reconstructing the housing stock is estimated to cost over $16 billion, a figure that incorporates elements of improved efficiency and sustainability rather than a direct rebuild-in-kind.

More than 1.2 million Gazans, roughly 60 percent of the population, lost their homes during the conflict. Before any vertical construction can begin, the report identifies debris clearance, explosive ordnance management, and the resolution of housing, land, and property rights as absolute prerequisites. The debris-removal process alone is expected to take several years, representing a significant logistical and financial undertaking before reconstruction at scale can be realistically initiated.

Economic trajectory and recovery requirements

The economic collapse documented in the RDNA is severe by any international measure. Gaza's economy contracted by 84 percent in 2024 - one of the steepest single-year economic contractions recorded anywhere in the world. Nearly three-quarters of the workforce lost their jobs, and the employment-to-population ratio fell to just 9.3 percent, among the lowest figures ever recorded globally. While real GDP expanded in 2025 under ceasefire conditions, the World Bank notes this reflects a statistical low base effect rather than genuine recovery, with most productive sectors remaining largely paralyzed.

Rebuilding agriculture, food systems, and commercial and industrial activity is estimated to require a further $19.5 billion. The report argues for a phased approach to the full $71.4 billion expenditure, with the initial phase focused on debris clearance and essential services before the secondary phase targets private sector revitalization. Economists involved in the study warn that without a lifting of trade restrictions and a significant influx of coordinated capital, the territory faces a prolonged state of economic depression.

Obstacles to recovery and the international response

The $71.4 billion figure is intended to serve as a roadmap for international donors, but the report is candid about the obstacles that stand between assessment and implementation. Political conditions, access restrictions, and governance questions are identified as primary impediments to translating technical plans into physical reconstruction. The RDNA explicitly states that all obstacles to the deployment of expertise and equipment must be removed rapidly, and that the international community must mobilize resources in a targeted, sequenced, and coordinated manner.

The assessment was developed in alignment with UN Security Council resolutions, including UNSCR 2803, and the UN and EU have both stated their commitment to a Palestinian-led reconstruction process. The report calls for recovery efforts to run in parallel with ongoing humanitarian action - not as a sequential process - to ensure an effective transition from emergency relief to reconstruction at scale, encompassing both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

A ceasefire has been in place since October 2025, but the World Bank notes that sustainable recovery has yet to begin in meaningful terms. International donors, multilateral institutions, and regional actors now face the question of how to operationalize the RDNA's findings under conditions that remain fragile and contested.