A spokesman for the agency quoted its report as saying that broad unemployment in the Gaza Strip in the second half of 2010 reached an unprecedented 45.2 percent, the world's highest, owing to the Israeli blockade. Since the first half of 2006 real wages continued to decline due to the increasing unemployment rate, falling 34.5 percent.

"It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution," he said.