UNRWA services 5.4 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) raised $110 million for Palestinians at a pledging conference in New York Tuesday, on the same day that the US held an economic workshop for Palestinians in Bahrain.
UNRWA, which services the Palestinians, still need another $101 million to address a deficit in its $1.2 billion budget for 2019.
Although the funds raised fell short of addressing that deficit, the sum raised is significantly higher than the $40 million raised at last year’s pledging conference, according to UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl.
“We need more money than that [$110 million], but it is an important step,” Krahenbuhl told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
UNRWA services 5.4 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It is chronically in need of funds, but the crisis has been more acute now that the US has halted its annual $360 million contribution to the organization.
Last year, UNRWA was able to make up the shortfall, but this year it is still short. But pledged dollars is only part of the funding issue for UNRWA, whose ability to meet its monthly budget is dependent on the timing of when countries make good on their pledges by actually transferring the dollars to UNRWA.
Prior to Tuesday’s pledging conference, UNRWA had received enough of the promised funds to pay its bill through May, entering into a deficit in June.
Krahenbuhl said that UNRWA was now calculating the impact of Tuesday’s pledges on its monthly budget.
“We are in a cash flow crisis now. Donors have the intention of adding money at a later stage, but right now we do not have enough money in our accounts to run all of our services,” Krahenbuhl.
The program most at risk is the Gaza food assistance program to 1 million Palestinians, who make up approximately half the Gaza population. Some 80 million is needed to maintain that program which distributes food four times a year.
“This is one of the key objectives of the pleading conference was to mobilize the needed money to keep the food pipeline uninterrupted.
“We can not afford, not for human dignity and not for regional stability, an interruption in that [program],” Krahenbuhl said.
The European Union on Tuesday pledged $23.7 million to UNRWA, which increases its total promised contribution to $121 million. The EU is the largest contributor to UNRWA.
The United Staes has argued that UNRWA’s fiscal practices are “irredeemably flawed.” It also holds, as does Israel, that UNRWA’s policy of conferring refugee status on the descendants of the refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel, creates an ever expanding class of refugees.
Such growth makes it difficult, if not impossible, to meet the Palestinian demand for a right of return in any way that allows for Israel to maintain its ethnic-nationalist identity as a Jewish state.
The US has argued that Palestinians can be better served economically than UNRWA. The US is holding conversions in Bahrain this week on an economic vision for the Palestinians, but the program it has outlined does not include any replacement for the immediate social services that UNRWA provides including food, education and health care.
Aside from withdrawing funding, US opposition to UNRWA can do little to shut the organization down, given that its mandate is to operate comes from the UN General Assembly, which is traditionally supportive of the Palestinians.
The UN General Assembly is set to renew the UNRWA mandate later this year.
In speaking to the donor conference Tuesday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pledges his support for UNRWA and a two state solution at the pre-1967 lines.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post