Statement by Filippo Grandi, UNRWA Deputy Commissioner-General Pledging Conference United Nations HQ, New York, 4 December 2007

Mr. President, distinguished delegates,

1. On behalf of the Commissioner-General, Karen AbuZayd, I wish to thank all those present for participating in this year’s Pledging Conference. The Commissioner-General has asked me to convey her deep appreciation for the support – financial and political – that your governments have provided to our Agency over many decades. As a voluntarily-funded agency, one with a budget requirement that has been steadily growing in line with the beneficiaries’ increasing needs, we are well aware that your generosity is regularly tested as we come to you for funds for different purposes. I can assure you, however, that it is all money well spent.

2. I must also give special thanks to you, Mr. President, for taking the time out from your busy schedule to preside over today’s meeting. Your presence is a signal of the importance given by the General Assembly to UNRWA. As you know, unlike other UN Funds and Programmes, the GA is both our legislative authority and our immediate parent. And, as any good parent should, the GA has always paid close attention to the financial wellbeing of this Agency.

Mr. President,

3. We meet at a time when a string of significant, round-number anniversaries related to the Israeli/Palestinian issue are being marked: here in New York, in the Middle East and perhaps wherever members of the far-flung Palestinian diaspora are to be found. Marking anniversaries helps us rededicate ourselves to ending the injustice and suffering that have flowed from cataclysmic events. At the same time, they provide an opportunity to take stock and measure the progress made since then in alleviating the consequences of upheaval and displacement.

4. Part of my address today will thus reconfirm what may be well known to some delegates, that while many Palestine refugees have taken great strides towards self-reliance and personal success, deep pockets of entrenched deprivation among them remain to be tackled throughout the regions where UNRWA operates. Moreover, the conflict that has plagued the occupied Palestinian territory since the year 2000 has had long lasting socio-economic consequences that will require the international community to engage in a sustained multi-year effort to overcome. The indicators that the World Bank, UNRWA and other UN agencies have recently published are deeply troubling, and cannot be dismissed lightly.

5. There are many dimensions to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I shall not enumerate them all. But most agree that, at the core, lies the plight of the refugees: 4.5 million of whom are today registered with UNRWA. Many of the others who fled from British Mandate Palestine in 1947 and 1948, or subsequently from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, chose either not to register as refugees, or else were unable to do so. They number in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. Our mandate is, however, restricted to those who meet our strict eligibility criteria and are physically present in the occupied Palestinian territory or else in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It is our sister agency, UNHCR, which is responsible for the protection of Palestinian and other refugees who live in other parts of the Middle East, such as Iraq, Egypt or Libya.

6. In Annapolis last week, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledged to President Bush and the assembled dignitaries that they would immediately begin intensive peace negotiations on the so-called “final status” issues, not least among them the refugee problem. UNRWA very much welcomes the fact that the refugee question has been put back on the negotiating table. After almost 60 years of being left in limbo, isn’t it high time that these people’s status and future was finally resolved? After all, even the ancient Prophets common to all the major monotheistic faiths were only required to spend seven years wandering in the desert!

7. If and when agreement is reached on a just and durable solution for the refugees, UNRWA will be ready to assist with its implementation. We have long been preparing for this moment: for example, by ensuring that standards of basic services available to the refugees are equivalent to those in the host countries, or by upgrading poor living conditions in camp areas, or else providing young Palestinian men and women with portable skills that will stand them in good stead in today’s highly competitive world, wherever they end up living. But we obviously cannot undertake the mammoth task of managing the transition on our own. The host governments and the donor community know they will need to shoulder additional burdens. And other UN agencies and specialized NGOs will have important roles to play in the task force.

8. We live in hope that this optimistic scenario will indeed transpire; but, there have been too many false dawns before to put much store in its realization. So, in the meantime, business as usual must continue. The refugees’ health, education and welfare needs cannot be put on hold while the politicians argue. Nor should we be expected to put a moratorium on overdue camp reconstruction plans required to give residents the basic minimum living standards to which they are entitled under UN conventions just because the political barometer is on the rise once again.

9. A pragmatic or, more accurately, realistic attitude on the part of UNRWA management requires us to continue to strengthen the organization’s capacity to deliver services effectively and efficiently. For the past two years we have been diligently preparing for the implementation of a full Programme Management Cycle across all our activities and in all five fields of operations, starting in 2010. From then onwards we shall have much greater ability to correlate inputs and outputs, and adapt programmes according to needs, as demanded by the principles of results-based management. Since late last year we have also been implementing a parallel Organizational Development programme, which I shall later describe in greater detail.

Mr. President,

10. For understandable reasons, much attention has lately been paid to the situation in the Gaza Strip. Regrettably, that focus has tended to overshadow the very difficult conditions endured these days by the much larger Palestinian population of the West Bank. It is hard to over-emphasize the consequences on daily life of the Israeli Government’s “separation barrier,” along with – at the latest count – some 550 checkpoints and fixed barriers to the movement of people and goods. Working in combination, this mesh of controls has fragmented the territory into a mosaic of shattered glass. Normal economic and social life is virtually at a standstill. Thus the impoverishment of the West Bank continues apace, and dependency on international aid through UNRWA and other organizations is on the rise.

11. As you might expect, we endorse wholeheartedly the efforts of Tony Blair, the Quartet Representative, to revive the local economy and give the population tangible grounds for hope of a better future, in the near future. He knows, however, that this goal cannot be met without a very significant easing of movement restrictions. For better or worse, UNRWA’s own work on behalf of three quarters of a million West Bank refugees will be directly affected by the results Mr. Blair and the peace negotiators can achieve over the coming year.

12. Our Emergency Appeal for the oPt was increased by a third this year, to USD 245 million. But pledges, unfortunately, fell well short of what was needed. As of today, about USD 133 million has been committed, down on the USD 141 million recorded in 2006. Some European donors opted to put their money into the EU’s Temporary International Mechanism instead. While that may have been a perfectly justifiable decision, I would simply note that the TIM, as it’s called, was never intended to serve the refugees, who make up about 40 percent of the oPt population.

13. For the coming year, along with other UN organizations working on the ground, we have cut back slightly the overall size of our new Appeal. The figures are not final yet; but we expect to be asking for about USD 236 million. That small reduction reflects a conflicting mix of considerations: on the one hand, under PM Salam Fayyad the Palestinian Authority has been able to resume regular salary payments to most – not all – of its employees - those people have therefore been able to come off the welfare rolls; on the negative side of the balance sheet, our estimate is that unemployment and poverty levels will be largely unchanged in 2008, at a time when, worldwide, the cost of the basic foodstuffs provided to needy people is on the rise. I would therefore like to use this platform to issue a clear appeal to your governments, not to neglect the essential humanitarian requirements of the Palestinians at a time when aid for development and institution-building is coming back into fashion again.

Mr. President,

14. The General Assembly has heard much about the huge exodus of Iraqis to safety in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Those countries are to be commended for the open-hearted way in which they have taken in their brethren. What has been less discussed is the effect this large influx has had on the previously resident Palestinian refugee population. As public services and facilities in Jordan and Syria become overloaded by the new arrivals, the Palestinians in turn are looking more to UNRWA to meet their basic needs. Government authorities in both countries are thus urging us to do more to expand our own capacity, and – in the case of Jordan in particular – to raise the unsatisfactory level of our educational services, to defray the burden falling on them. UNRWA is acutely conscious of the need to do better; but has been unable to implement existing improvement plans due to a lack of funding for its regular budget.

15. Allow me now to turn to Lebanon. For two successive years, the Field has been rocked by many weeks of intense violence, violence that displaced tens of thousands of Palestine refugees and disrupted ambitious, medium-term plans to upgrade education services and camp living conditions. This year’s clashes, between the militant Fatah al-Islam group and the Lebanese Army resulted in the total destruction of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, previously home to over 31,000 people. Donors responded swiftly and generously to the initial Flash Appeal we launched, pledging USD 17.3 million. Some of those funds were carried over to the new Appeal launched in September to sustain the displaced population over the following year and prepare for the mammoth task of rebuilding the camp. In close coordination with the Lebanese Government and the World Bank, we are now putting the finishing touches to a new request for donor funding expected to be issued early next year to enable Nahr el-Bared to be rebuilt, on its original site but to a higher standard than in the past. That project will undoubtedly be the largest UNRWA has ever had to undertake – perhaps as much as ten times the magnitude of the Jenin camp reconstruction project in the West Bank and other major re-housing projects we have carried out in the Gaza Strip. Partnership with other organizations and the Government will be essential.

16. Given the considerable political uncertainty in Lebanon at present, it is hard to predict the future direction of official policies. What we fervently hope, though, is that the next government will maintain the progressive, and bold, policies towards the Palestine refugees living in Lebanon championed by Prime Minister Siniora. UNRWA is eager to get on with its USD 50 million Camp Improvement Initiative designed to address some of the worst living conditions refugees are obliged to endure throughout the Middle East. Donors have already committed over USD 20 million to this initiative.

17. On the subject of taking a comprehensive approach to the upgrading of our services, I would be remiss if I did not mention our Agency-wide “Schools of Excellence” programme. Raising the quality of our standards and examining new ways to deal with old problems, such as extreme poverty, are among the leitmotifs of UNRWA management.

Mr. President,

18. As you know, the Working Group on the Financing of UNRWA is a standing body of the General Assembly. In its latest report to the GA, the Working Group reiterates that it is the responsibility of the international community “to ensure that UNRWA services are maintained at an acceptable level in quantitative and qualitative terms and that funding keeps pace with the changing needs of the refugee population.” Distinguished delegates, this is an important assertion from a group of member states mandated by the GA to assist the UN Secretary-General and the UNRWA Commissioner-General to reach solutions to the Agency’s chronic financial crises and to follow-up on General Assembly recommendations.

19. This year’s Working Group report noted that donor pledges to our core General Fund have once again fallen short of the budgeted amount, by about 18 percent, and called on all concerned to help fill the gap, currently estimated at USD 92 million. If it had not been for exchange rate gains due to the continued weakening of the US dollar against other major currencies, the situation would undoubtedly have been much worse.

20. At the urging of our donors, in the current biennium approaching its end, we adopted a needs-based approach to budgeting. Inevitably, that shift from a resource-constrained to needs-based approach pushed up the overall requirement. Despite the shortfalls and disappointment that ensued over the past two years, for the forthcoming period UNRWA has maintained the same logic. Our priorities for 2008–09 remain maintenance of the present level of core services and, provided additional funds are made available by donors, implementation of certain key programme improvements without which there would be a further deterioration in standards of service delivery and the fabric of our installations and equipment.

21. Including our Projects Budget, which covers infrastructure and non-recurrent expenditure such as the introduction of new vocational training courses, our total budget for 2008–09 is USD 1.21 billion, down slightly from the USD 1.28 billion for the current biennium. Keeping in mind that on average the beneficiary population grows by about 2.5 percent a year, I trust you agree that this is a realistic budget which both demonstrates prudence and keeps faith with the legitimate demands of the refugees and the host authorities for higher quality services from UNRWA.

22. Earlier I informed you about the status of our current Emergency Appeal. Next week, the United Nations will issue its next Consolidated Appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory, of which UNRWA will be an integral part. A few days later, the UN will participate in the Paris Donors Conference aimed at supporting the Palestinian Authority and restarting development activities. The two sets of activities – humanitarian and developmental – go hand-in-hand; to support the political process over the coming year, as we must, both are equally essential.

Mr. President,

23. Once a year, UNRWA comes to the General Assembly to appeal for the continued support of member states. Last month, the Commissioner-General was gratified by the resounding echoes of political support for the Agency, from all sides, in an adjoining conference room. Today, I look forward to hearing from those states able to announce the financial support we also need. We are fully aware that the timing of this event does not coincide with the budgetary and legislative cycles of many governments, and thus that not all will be able to make concrete pledges today. Nevertheless, I hope that you will report back to capitols on the importance of keeping our work going at the required level for a while longer, until the burgeoning political process now underway finally bears fruit.

I thank you for your attention.