Despite Israeli pressure to dismantle it, the agency is an essential provider of protection, food, health and education to millions of people
Amid Israeli pressure to dismantle it, the Unrwa is indispensable to PalestiniansState to take significant step towards intervening in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
Today, the Unrwa quasi-state has a population of 5.9 million registered citizens, including the original refugees and their descendants. In its five areas of operations, Unrwa runs 58 camps, sheltering about a third of the refugees, and employs 30,000 staff, two-thirds of whom are teachers, as education is the agency’s consuming task. Unrwa operates 706 schools with 543,000 students, and 140 primary health centres with more than 3,000 health workers.
Unrwa’ s enduring problem has always been funding. The agency relies on voluntary contributions rather than a sum from the overall UN budget. Former Unrwa spokesman Chris Gunness pointed out that the UN General Assembly had given Unrwa “a quasi-government mandate but not a government budget”. While his successor, Joe Biden, restored $235 million in 2022 and $422 million in 2023, he suspended the US contributions for 2024 after Israel accused a dozen of Unrwa’s 13,000 Gaza staff of involvement in the October 7th attack by Hamas. Last week the US Congress maintained the cut until March 2025.
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