Senior European Leaders Reiterate Call to Support UNRWA – Press Release

21 July 2020
PRS children sit in front of their rented shelter in Beddawi refugee camp, Lebanon. © 2019 UNRWA Photo by Maysoun Mustafa
PRS children sit in front of their rented shelter in Beddawi refugee camp, Lebanon. © 2019 UNRWA Photo by Maysoun Mustafa

Thirty-one senior European politicians came in support of the United National Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) yesterday through a letter that reiterated the essential role that the Agency plays in a highly volatile region.

As UNRWA continues to face financial and political challenges, its health, education, social and other services offer 5.6 million Palestine refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, predictability in an otherwise very unstable environment.

“In a region rife with conflicts, and now battling the health and socioeconomic impacts of Covid-19, UNRWA stands as a vital source of regional stability,” says the letter. The Agency managed to quickly shift the way it works in the initial weeks of the pandemic to help prevent a much dreaded outbreak and outspread of the virus in densely populated Palestine refugees camps. By switching to distance-learning, telemedicine and food delivery, among other measures, the virus remained largely contained.

But UNRWA, whose mandate was renewed for another three years last December by an overwhelming majority at the United Nations General Assembly, is struggling to raise the funding it needs to continue running all its programmes. In a recent meeting with donors and host governments at the Advisory Commission, an advisory body to UNRWA, the Agency’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, appealed for support to what he described as “a source of stability in a highly unstable region.”

To date, UNRWA has received funding and pledges that can cover less than 50 per cent of its main budget and 60 per cent for its planned COVID-19 response. It has received even less for its emergency budgets to respond to the acute humanitarian needs in Syria and Gaza, where Palestine refugees often live in abject poverty.

Background Information:

UNRWA is confronted with an increased demand for services resulting from a growth in the number of registered Palestine refugees, the extent of their vulnerability and their deepening poverty. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions and financial support has been outpaced by the growth in needs. As a result, the UNRWA programme budget, which supports the delivery of core essential services, operates with a large shortfall. UNRWA encourages all Member States to work collectively to exert all possible efforts to fully fund the Agency’s programme budget. UNRWA emergency programmes and key projects, also operating with large shortfalls, are funded through separate funding portals.

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and mandated to provide assistance and protection to some 5.6 million Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA across its five fields of operation. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip achieve their full human development potential, pending a just and lasting solution to their plight. UNRWA services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, protection and microfinance.


2020-07-23T10:28:26-04:00

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