UN Palestinian refugee agency narrows shortfall after US cuts
Financial commitments made on sidelines of UN General Assembly gathering, with UNRWA's commissioner-general saying that the largest funding pledges came from Germany, the European Union, Kuwait, Ireland and Norway.
Pierre Krahenbuhl, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the pledges were made at a meeting on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York.
He said the largest funding pledges on Thursday were made by Germany, the European Union, Kuwait, Ireland and Norway.
"Five million Palestinian refugees were following these events very, very closely indeed. It was year of tremendous existential concerns, of great anxiety ... I think it is a very big step that has been achieved today," Krahenbuhl said.
The United States last month announced a halt in its aid to UNRWA, calling it an "irredeemably flawed operation," a decision that further heightened tensions between the Palestinian leadership and the Trump administration.
The growing refugee count was cited by Washington, UNRWA's biggest donor, in its decision to withhold funding.
"We're sending a message that the world does still care about the plight of Palestinian refugees," Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told reporters.
"The challenge is to sustain this effort and part of what we discussed today is a way in which we could have a long term financial planning so not every year in August, Palestinian kids will be wondering if they have a school to go to," he said.
UNRWA has become the subject of significant scrutiny since Trump entered the White House.
After appointing his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a Mideast advisor charged with formulating a long-awaited peace initiative to put an end to the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the UN refugee organization appeared to occupy a significant spot on his radar.
In an internal email published by Foreign Policy magazine, Kushner called for a "sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA."
"This (agency) perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn't help peace," he reportedly wrote in an email dated January 11.
The agency was founded in 1949 after the first Arab-Israel war—the War of Independence—in the wake of the exodus of around 700,000 refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel on its founding as a state.
The nascent state of Israel absorbed Jewish refugees who were expelled or who fled from neighboring Arab countries, while other Arab states refused to grant the Palestinians citizenship.
As a result, UNRWA now looks after more than 5 million descendants of those original refugees, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel argues that UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem by grossly inflating the number of bona fide refugees.
Since the agency includes descendants of Palestinian refugees from the War of Independence, it grants refugee status to Palestinians according to criteria that is not adhered to in any other refugee question.
