The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is “irreplaceable” and “indispensable” – not just for Gaza and the occupied West Bank but for the entire region.
That was the message several top diplomats stressed on Thursday at the UN General Assembly as they pleaded for political and financial support for the agency.
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“UNRWA is a force for stability in the most unstable region of the world,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a meeting held on the sidelines of the summit.
“UNRWA is vital to any prospects of peace and stability in the region. I urge you to do all you can to support its work.”
The agency’s role has been under the microscope since the outbreak of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.
As bombing campaigns and a ground invasion displaced thousands of Palestinians, UNRWA became one of the main distributors of aid in the territory.
But with the United States – once UNRWA’s largest donor – cutting off funding, the UN agency is now facing a major financial crisis with a budget deficit of $200m.
On Thursday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned that “UNRWA is collapsing”.
“I do not have to make the case for UNRWA. The starving children of Gaza so painfully make that case,” Safadi said.
“The mothers who are watching their infants fade before their eyes make the case for UNRWA. The 600,000 or more students in Gaza, who have not gone to school for two years, make the case for UNRWA.”
The UN organisation provides healthcare, education, humanitarian aid and cash assistance to millions of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory and across the Middle East.
The agency was founded in 1949 to look after the needs of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their towns during the establishment of the state of Israel a year earlier.
Since then, UNRWA has been providing services to displaced Palestinians and their descendants, who remain stateless refugees.
For years, successive Israeli governments have pushed to delegitimise UNRWA, accusing it of distributing anti-Semitic materials and having ties to armed groups.
But critics have argued that efforts to undermine UNRWA are designed to erase the plight of Palestinian refugees who seek to return to their homes in modern-day Israel.
In the wake of the Hamas-led attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, pressure on UNRWA increased.
Israel falsely claimed that a significant number of UNRWA employees participated in the attack, despite providing no credible evidence.
That led several countries to suspend funding for the agency. While many subsequently restored the aid to UNRWA, the US has not.
At Thursday’s meeting, which aimed to rally international support for UNRWA, Safadi explained that the agency had been facing a “political assassination campaign” long before October 2023.
He also paid tribute to the sacrifices of UNRWA staff members, hundreds of whom have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began.
“And yet, UNRWA persists. It perseveres,” the Jordanian diplomat said.
“UNRWA staff, who bury their kin, leave and try to give help to others in need in Gaza. That’s why we must save. That’s why we say UNRWA is indispensable. Its role is irreplaceable.”
For his part, Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira decried the push to discredit UNRWA.
“Legal restrictions on UNRWA operations and the closure of UNRWA offices and facilities in East Jerusalem are part of a troubling pattern of obstruction and violence carried out by the Israeli government,” he said.
“Equally concerning are attempts to delegitimise UNRWA through disinformation campaigns, defamation, legal harassment [and] initiatives aimed at replacing the agency with other humanitarian actors in Gaza with mechanisms that militarise aid distribution.”
In recent months, Israel has passed laws to ban the agency from the country and prohibit contact with it.
That, in turn, has hampered UNRWA’s operations in occupied East Jerusalem, which has been annexed by Israel.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares announced his country will provide 10 million euros ($11.66m) to the agency, bringing the sum that Madrid has donated to UNRWA since the start of the war to about 60 million euros ($70m).
“The needs are immense, and we need to stand by the agency and provide the financial support that it requires to operate,” Albares said.
He added that countries that do not like the UNRWA works should push for the establishment of a Palestinian state that would take on UNRWA’s tasks and take care of its own people.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said that, despite the dire situation on the ground in Gaza, the agency remains operational in the territory.
“We still have 12,000 staff,” he said. “They are still – on a daily basis and against all odds – providing health services, doing nutritional screening for the children, ensuring access to clean water, managing shelters, [and] providing – whenever it is possible – some psychosocial support to the children.”