Explained | Why did US allies pause funding to UNRWA?

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appealed to the countries that suspended funding to the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees (UNRWA) to reconsider their decisions, to ensure continuity of its vital humanitarian operations.

At least nine countries, including top donors the US and Germany, have paused funding for the UNRWA after allegations by Israel that a dozen of its 13,000 staff in Gaza were involved in the October 7 rampage.

Guterres said that of the 12 employees accused of taking part in the attack, nine were immediately terminated, one was confirmed dead and two others were still being identified. He said they would be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.

The United States, which is the agency’s largest donor, immediately cut funding, followed by eight other countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy. Together, the nine countries provided nearly 60 per cent of UNRWA’s budget in 2022.

What is the purpose of UNRWA?

• Created in December 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a relief and human development agency which supports more than five million registered Palestinian refugees, and their patrilineal descendants, who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Palestine war as well as those who fled or were expelled during and following the 1967 Six Day war.

• The UNRWA has been providing health, education, relief and social services, as well as emergency humanitarian assistance, across its five fields of operation — Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip — since 1950. 

• It also provided relief to Jewish and Arab Palestine refugees inside the State of Israel following the 1948 conflict until the Israeli government took over responsibility for Jewish refugees in 1952.

• In the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate.

• The refugees and their descendants number about six million, and in Gaza they are the majority of the population. 

Vital humanitarian efforts at risk

• The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, destroyed vast swaths of Gaza and displaced nearly 85 per cent of the territory's people. 

• The October 7 Hamas attack into southern Israel that sparked the war killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostages to Gaza. 

• The coastal enclave is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of the population facing starvation as fighting and Israeli restrictions hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged territory.

• UNRWA, which has some 13,000 staff members in Gaza, expanded its operations during the war and runs shelters that house hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people.

• Guterres warned that UNRWA would be forced to scale back aid to more than two million Palestinians in Gaza as soon as February. 

• More than two million of the territory’s 2.3 million people depend on the agency’s programmes for sheer survival, including food and shelter. 

• The Agency operates shelters for over one million people and has been providing food and healthcare since the start of the conflict.