Arab News | UN member states back UNRWA at General Assembly amid ‘untenable’ status quo

LONDON: UN member states rallied in support of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees on Thursday.

It came as the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, called on donors to safeguard the “critical stabilizing presence” of UNRWA amid “intolerable” conditions in Gaza and “enormous challenges” in Lebanon.

He was speaking at a high-level ministerial meeting — co-chaired by Brazil, Jordan and Spain during the UN General Assembly in New York — which sought to bolster support for the beleaguered UN agency. Foreign ministers from around the world, and key UN officials, pledged to support the work of UNRWA in the face of an immense funding shortfall and what was described as an Israeli campaign of “political assassination.”

Those who joined Guterres at the meeting included: the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk; the president of the UN General Assembly, Khalilur Rahman; the Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour; and Ayman Safadi, Jose Manuel Albares, Mauro Vieira and Badr Abdelatty, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Spain, Brazil and Egypt, respectively.

Palestinian refugees “face acute and persistent perils across this turbulent region,” Guterres warned. Although the limited resumption of aid deliveries to Gaza had brought “some relief” after years of war, conditions in the territory remained “intolerable,” he said, with an average of four people still being killed each day despite a ceasefire announced last October.

“International law, including international humanitarian law, is brazenly violated,” Guterres added. “Humanitarian access remains severely restricted, and the level of human suffering is still off the charts. Food is scarce, shelter is in short supply and rodents are rampant.”

Meanwhile, the circumstances Palestinians faced in the occupied West Bank were also at “breaking point,” he said, as he highlighted “record levels of settler attacks and relentless efforts to expand settlements.”

Lebanon is also home to a sizable community of Palestinian refugees, who have been affected by Israel’s “destructive airstrikes and extensive ground operations” in southern Lebanon, Guterres said, which have resulted in “massive displacement.”

In neighboring Syria, Palestinian refugees were “slowly trying to rebuild their lives and communities after 13 years of conflict and destruction,” he added.

The mounting human toll of these conflicts means that UNRWA is more than a lifeline for Palestinians, Guterres said: “It is the nurse who vaccinated them in childhood or changed the dressing on their wounds; the doctor who administers treatment when they are sick or provides expert care during the birth of a child; the teacher who gave them the knowledge, skills and hope to build a better future.”

Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, who is a longtime advocate of the Palestinian cause and UNRWA, warned that the agency was suffering a “tremendous shortage in funding that is rendering it incapable of performing its noble duties.”

If the agency were to fail as a result of an Israeli campaign of “political assassination,” he said, 2 million Palestinians in Gaza would “go hungry, go cold” and lose access to education.

“Nobody can replace UNRWA … we must recognize that what UNRWA does is irreplaceable,” he added.

Safadi described support for the agency as a “moral duty and obligation” that member states must meet.

“We let the Palestinian people down for so long,” he said. “We cannot deny them the one agency that can help them until conditions change, until we all come together and make sure that UNRWA is no longer needed. And UNRWA will no longer be needed only when a Palestinian state emerges (with) full sovereignty, independent, that can address the needs of its people in the context of the two-state solution.”

He rejected calls for the responsibilities of the agency to be taken over by host countries, and his stance was widely shared among the other states at the meeting.

“We must not allow for any change of that mandate, and we will not allow for any of the responsibilities of UNRWA to be transferred to the host countries because then, eventually, that will be the first step in liquidating UNRWA,” Safadi said.

Guterres praised the agency for the decades of work it had done in “highly challenging environments” to provide essential public services and “prepare Palestinian refugees for a more peaceful and dignified future.”

However, UNRWA has faced significant pressure from Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, including allegations that some agency employees played a part in the Hamas-led attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and a subsequent ban on agency operations on Israeli territory. As a result of the allegations, a number of high-profile Western donor nations suspended funding for UNRWA in 2024, though most later reversed their decisions.

“UNRWA has been forced to operate under extraordinary pressure” for years, Guterres said. Agency workers in Gaza “have endured terrible loss and hardship,” he added, with almost 400 members of its staff killed, and hundreds of its facilities destroyed.

Israeli security forces have also increased their pressure on the agency in the occupied West Bank, most notably in East Jerusalem, where several of its schools and health centers were forcibly closed. In January, Israeli forces entered and bulldozed the UNRWA headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, prompting widespread international condemnation.

In addition to the physical destruction of agency facilities, Israel had also mounted a “ceaseless political campaign … that has tried to manipulate public perceptions, undermine UNRWA’s ability to operate, and deny the rights of Palestinian refugees,” Guterres said.

After years of spending cuts by donor countries, amid mounting needs, the agency now faces a funding shortfall of $100 million, he warned.

“UNRWA’s capacity to act is seriously imperiled,” he added as he appealed for immediate financial and political support for the agency. “The status quo is untenable. Regional stability is at stake and member states must take immediate action.

“Together, we can deliver for Palestinian refugees and open a pathway to peace.”

Foreign Minister Albares, representing the Spanish government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, which has advocated extensively for the rights of Palestinians, condemned the “exclusion of humanitarian actors” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, which he said was “creating a very dangerous vacuum.”

He added: “It’s aggravating the suffering and despair of millions of Palestinian refugees that desperately need humanitarian assistance for their basic survival.”

Rahman, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, who has been president of UN General Assembly since Sept. 8, said almost 6 million Palestinian refugees fell under UNRWA’s mandate in the Middle East.

“We have a moral, legal and practical responsibility to sustain the work of UNRWA: morally because of the millions of people it serves; legally because of our responsibilities under the UN Charter, international law, international humanitarian law and the mandate established by this General Assembly; and practically because of the stabilizing role UNRWA plays not only in Palestine, but also across the region,” he said.

Mansour, Palestine’s envoy to the UN, condemned Israel’s “massive destruction” of refugee camps across the occupied West Bank and Gaza as part of a “broader pattern of forcible displacement, destruction and disposition that threatens to uproot Palestinians from their land.”

He added: “We must all rise to this existential challenge. Provide predictable and sufficient funding. Protect UNRWA personnel and premises. Demand restoration of its facilities. Ensure unhindered humanitarian access and uphold international law. Palestinian refugees must not be abandoned.”

Vieira, Brazil’s foreign minister, criticized Israeli plans to construct military facilities at the site of the former UNRWA compound in Sheikh Jarrah. He described the agency as “indispensable and irreplaceable.”

Attacks against UNRWA by Israel since the start of the war in Gaza had been “relentless,” he added, with workers, premises and operations all being targeted.

Abdelatty, the Egyptian foreign minister, praised the agency and its employees for persevering in the face of “grave challenges” and continuing to deliver services.

“The Palestinian staff members have remained in the field, serving their communities, providing education, healthcare and shelter to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” he said.