UN agency for Palestinians requires $50-80m to function
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Salma Hossein
- . November 15, 2022
- . Update: November 16, 2022 1:02 am
The president of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees stated on Monday that the organization’s “assets have become outmoded” and that it requires $50–80 million to continue providing services through the end of the year.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement from Amman that the organisation has endured “years of austerity” and requires a $200 million capital investment over the next three years to help replenish depleted assets.
More than 700,000 Palestinians who were violently driven from their homes by Zionist militias in 1948—the year the state of Israel was founded—were served by UNRWA with food, medical care, education, and other services.
The oldest UN organisation operates in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, giving Palestinian refugees essential services like healthcare and education.
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There are currently 5.7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, including their descendants, but according to Lazzarini, UNRWA only assists the 500,000 students and the 2.8 million people who receive health care.
According to Lazzarini, who spoke at a press conference in the Jordanian city of Amman, the agency’s services are essential for the people who get them due to the high rates of poverty in the country.
“Our judgement over the last few months is that we have poverty rates up to 80%, to 90%, in countries like Lebanon, like Syria, like Gaza, which means the entire community depends on the lifeline UNRWA can provide to them,” he said.
According to Lazzarini, with a gift of more than $340 million, the US has been the agency’s largest single donor this year. He claimed that the conflict in Ukraine has a negative impact on the funding the UN organisation receives.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, Youmna El Sayed, said that the Refugee Popular Committee was holding a protest in front of the UNRWA headquarters on Monday. People were demonstrating against the world community’s disregard for their predicament.
In order to make UNRWA independent of funding initiatives and donor nations, protesters want the UN to provide stable funding. Along with other services like food coupons and humanitarian relief, they want greater employment options, which have substantially decreased since 2007.
El Sayed added that until the implementation of UN resolution 194, which deals with the right of refugees to return to their ancestral home in modern-day Israel, 1.3 million refugees in Gaza who were living below the poverty line needed immediate assistance and more work opportunities.
Former UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness told Al Jazeera that a team of specialists and refugees had just developed solutions to the problems the UN agency was facing.
