UN seeks new funding pledges for Palestinian refugees
In bid to cover massive shortfall caused by US withholding millions of dollars from UNRWA, countries are implored to donate funds to alleviate ‘great anxiety and uncertainty.’
The UN held a conference to raise money for basic services—from food assistance and medical care to sanitation—for 5 million refugees in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
After the session, the United Nations was still tallying how much was pledged by which countries against this year’s shortfall of $250 million facing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which leads the relief efforts.
UN officials said the United States, the program’s top donor, gave $364 million to the agency last year but only $60 million this year. Pierre Krahenbuhl, the agency’s director, said the cut is endangering basic services such as food assistance in Gaza and medical clinics spread among the five areas, while about 500,000 children may not be able to start the school year.
“The situation of Palestinians is defined by great anxiety and uncertainty, first because Palestinian refugees do not see a solution to their plight on the horizon,” he said at a briefing before the conference.
In Gaza, nearly 2 million men, women and children already are experiencing extreme shortages of water and electricity amid tensions that have worsened between the Palestinians and Israel since President Donald Trump opened a US Embassy in Jerusalem.
His administration announced in January that it was withholding $65 million of a planned $125 million funding installment for the relief agency.
At the time, Trump tweeted that he saw no reason to spend so much American money in return for what he called “no appreciation or respect” from Palestinians.
Agency spokesman Christopher Gunness has said the actual cut was around $300 million because the US had led the agency to believe it would provide $365 million in 2018. The US government released $60 million in January so UNRWA could pay teachers and health workers and keep schools and medical services open in Gaza and the West Bank, but made clear that US donations would be contingent on major reforms.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said last week that the agency needs to “determine a way to better manage its budgeting and its finances.”
The agency was created after the war that followed the birth of Israel in 1948, with about 700,000 Palestinians living there either fleeing or being forced from their homes. The UNRWA now faces its worst crisis in nearly seven decades, Krahenbuhl said.
In a report to the Security Council earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza is compounded by the potential suspension of UN programs, which are “a lifeline for Palestinians.”
Israel complains that the organization grants Palestinian refugees special status by counting descendants of Palestinians who were either forced to leave or fled during the 1948 War of Independence.
By using this unique categorization which no other refugee in the world is afforded, Israel says that UNRWA is responsible for exacerbating, rather than solving, the problem.
