Jordan leads push for emergency funding for Palestinian refugees

“Our action or inaction determines whether … millions of Palestinians will continue to receive their right to medical treatment, or if more than a million Palestinian refugee men and women will continue to receive assistance to meet their living needs.” – Ayman Safadi

15/3/2018

(Edited by M. E. Times Int'l)

Jordan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Ayman Safadi has headed a summit meeting to garner support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

JORDANIAN politician Ayman Safadi has clearly spelled out the crisis faced by Palestinian refugees. In his opening remarks at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Mr Safadi said: “Our meeting comes in exceptional circumstances, in which UNRWA faces a difficult financial crisis that threatens the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to live in dignity.”

“Our action or inaction determines whether 500,000 Palestinian students will be able to exercise their basic right to education in school, and if millions of Palestinians will continue to receive their right to medical treatment, or if more than a million Palestinian refugee men and women will continue to receive assistance to meet their living needs.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: “A very important first stop was reached today, but a long way is in front of us.  If UNRWA did not exist, if its services were not provided, the security of the region would be undermined.”

Washington donates about $350 million a year to UNRWA, which was founded in 1949 to aid Palestinian refugees, but so far this year has handed over $60 million. UN officials fear they might not receive any more from the US in 2018.

President Donald Trump said in January the US would only give aid if the Palestinians agreed to renew peace talks with Israel. The talks have been frozen since 2014, and with no negotiations in sight, envoys from around 70 countries and organisations met in Rome to discuss the funding crisis.

Going into the meeting, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl had warned his organisation would run out of funds in May. The new pledges gave the agency a bit more breathing room.

“It will last us a couple of months more,” he said. “We need to be optimistic.”

Among the countries that had offered more money were France, Qatar, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Mexico, South Korea, Slovakia and India, he said.

Humanitarian crisis

UNRWA serves about five million Palestinian refugees in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. It runs 710 schools, its doctors carry out some nine million consultancies a year and it feeds some 1.7 million people -- mostly in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians say funding cuts would especially impact Gaza, where half the two million population rely on humanitarian aid.

In the Baqaa refugee camp in Jordan some Palestinians said public services had already been affected by the funding cuts, with UNRWA laying off garbage collectors and teachers on strike.

For most dwellers in Baqaa and other camps, UNRWA is a potent symbol of refugee identity and they fear that if it is scrapped, any hope of return to their original homes will be dashed forever.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced measured support for the US fund cut, but also appeared to acknowledge it could leave Israel, which maintains tight restrictions on the movement of people and goods across the Gaza border, facing a potential humanitarian crisis on its doorstep.