UN agency for Palestinians raises just $107m of $300m needed
Donor countries have provided just $107 million in new funds to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, significantly less than the $300 million it needs to continue helping millions of people in Israeli-occupied territories and refugee camps in neighboring countries.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the agency known as UNRWA, said he was grateful for the new pledges, but that they fall short of the amount needed to keep more than 700 schools and 140 clinics open from September to June. December.
“We will continue to work tirelessly with our partners, including host countries – the refugees’ main supporters – to raise the necessary funds,” he said in a statement.
The pledging conference, which took place at UN headquarters in New York on Friday, came as UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that UNRWA is “on the verge of financial collapse,” noting that the agency is already running short of nearly $75 million. .
At the beginning of the year, UNRWA appealed for $1.6 billion for its programs, operations and relief efforts in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. That includes nearly $850 million for the core budget, including running schools and health clinics.
Donors announced $812.3 million in pledges Friday, but only $107.2 million were new contributions, according to UNRWA. The countries pledging new funds were not disclosed.
Lazzarini told a news conference Thursday that UNRWA needs $150 million to keep all services up and running through the end of the year, and another $50 million to start 2024 with no strings attached. In addition, he said, the agency needs $75 million to keep the food pipeline running in Gaza and about $30 million for its cash distribution program in Syria and Lebanon.
Adnan Abu Hasna, of UNRWA in Gaza, said the agency is currently in a serious financial crisis.
“Nearly half a million students in our schools depend on our services. We provide food to nearly 1.2 million Palestinian refugees,” he told Al Jazeera.
“In a place like Gaza, any shock to our programs or our activities or services will threaten the stability and even the social fabric, as refugees depend on our money aid program for education and health.”
UNRWA was established in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 to provide education, health care, social services and, in some cases, jobs to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees forced from their homes. Today, their numbers — with descendants — have grown to about 5.9 million people, most of them in the Gaza Strip and the illegally occupied West Bank, as well as neighboring countries in the Middle East.
UNRWA has been facing a financial crisis for 10 years, but Lazzarini said the current crisis is “huge” and called it “our main existential threat”.
“It’s getting deeper and our ability to muddle through is slowly coming to an end,” he said. “The situation is even more critical now that some of our dedicated donors have indicated that they will substantially reduce their contribution to the agency.”
Guterres said in a speech read by his chief of staff at the start of the pledging conference that “when the future of UNRWA is at stake, so are the lives of millions of Palestinian refugees who depend on essential services.”
Those services include education for more than half a million girls and boys, health care for about two million people, job opportunities for youth in Gaza and elsewhere, psychosocial support for hundreds of thousands of children, and a social safety net for nearly half a million of the poorest Palestinians. , he said. More than 1.2 million Palestinians also receive humanitarian aid.
“Remember, hundreds of thousands of them [Palestinians] were forcibly evicted from their homes following the war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel,” said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, who reports from the occupied West Bank.
“The agency has said for years that it is deeply underfunded,” she said.
“And it is said here that the international community and donors are gradually abandoning their duties when it comes to refugees.”