UNRWA calls on the international community to secure $ 1.5 billion to support Palestinian refugees

Occupied Jerusalem - SANA

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) called on the international community to secure $ 1.5 billion to finance its basic services for Palestinian refugees in the areas of their deployment in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

In a press release carried by Sputnik, UNRWA stated that $ 806 million is needed to secure basic services such as education, health, relief and social services, protection, infrastructure and camp improvement, noting that the emergency humanitarian aid provided by UNRWA in response to the devastating effects of the blockade and occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories requires 231 One million dollars is also needed for nearly 170 million dollars for priority projects to repair or build UNRWA facilities and improve basic services.

UNRWA stressed that it will continue to meet the human and humanitarian development and protection needs of Palestinian refugees until a just and lasting solution is found to their plight.

UNRWA called on donor countries to provide the necessary funding to enable it to fulfill its mandate and to avoid recurrent financial crises that put the Agency's basic humanitarian and life-saving services at risk.

It is noteworthy that the financial problems of the UN agency were exacerbated after former US President Donald Trump in 2018 stopped US funding to the agency, estimated at more than 300 million dollars annually, almost a third of the basic annual budget of UNRWA.

A member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Ayman Al-Raqb, said that the UNRWA crisis increased after America cut its aid to the agency, as well as due to the donor countries ’failure to pay financial dues, which are greatly reduced in light of the increase in the number of refugees.

Al-Raqb added ... that UNRWA needs more than one billion dollars annually, and the funds that do not exceed half of this amount, and there is a large deficit, which threatens the inability of the Agency to provide its services in the health and educational sectors and the service aid sector to refugees.

In turn, the coordinator of the Joint Committee for Palestinian Refugees, Mahmoud Khalaf, explained that there are widespread Israeli attempts to restrict the work of UNRWA, with the support of the previous US administration, through its relations with a number of countries in the world that support UNRWA, or by proposing a draft law in the United Nations to limit the definition of refugees to those born in the occupied Palestinian territories. In 1948, they are still alive, and they number only 40,000, which means that the refugee status of about 6 million of the children and grandchildren of these refugees will be dropped.

Khalaf stressed that all these attempts were unsuccessful due to the insistence of the Palestinian people and the refugees to uphold their inherent right to return to the Palestinian territories, in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

Khalaf pointed out that the continuation of UNRWA in providing its services to the Palestinian refugees is an expression of the will of the international community to stand by the Palestinian people.

In November 2019, 170 countries voted in the United Nations General Assembly in favor of the resolution to renew the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, in exchange for the objection of the United States and "Israel", and 7 countries abstaining from voting.