BEIRUT (AP) — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday that without a new injection of funding, it is “likely or highly likely” that the agency will not be able to deliver some services or pay salaries by the fall.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said at a press conference in Beirut that the agency responsible for services to Palestinian refugees has been facing a shortfall of $150 million to $200 million annually in recent years.
Donors at a conference earlier this month pledged $115.2 million, of which only $13.2 million were new funds — significantly less than the $300 million the agency had called for to keep its programs running through the end of the year.
Those programs include health and education services and, in some cases, cash assistance to families in Syria, Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Jordan.
While he acknowledged that the agency’s funding woes have become “almost a broken record,” Lazzarini warned donors not to “take for granted the ability of UNRWA to muddle through.”
In Lebanon, which has been reeling from an unprecedented economic crisis since 2019, some 93% of Palestinian refugees in the country now live in poverty. Palestinians in Lebanon are banned from owning property and from working in most white collar professions. The worsening economic situation in the country has driven many to take to the sea in often-deadly attempts to reach Europe.
Lazzarini said that when the agency recently advertised for 14 sanitation workers in Lebanon’s refugee camps, it got 37,000 applicants, including many holding university degrees.
“This shows how little avenues Palestinian refugees have here when it comes to job opportunities,” he said.
Lazzarini said the international community needs to have a “proper, honest” discussion about what the agency’s future role should be in the absence of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would mean the end of its mandate.
“Next year we will be marking the 75th year of an agency, which was supposed to be a temporary agency,” Lazzarini said. “And at the same time, it seems we have never, ever been further away from a lasting and fair political solution.”
UNRWA was founded in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 to serve hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes. Today, their numbers have grown to some 5.9 million people, most in the Gaza Strip and Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as neighboring countries in the Middle East.
