United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is facing a financial implosion for the last 10 years, which could cause an interruption or end of services to five million refugees.
The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini said this. Notably, refugees from Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon receive benefits from the UNRWA.
“Every year though, and especially in the last decade, you heard that UNRWA gets cash-strapped and near to implosion and then almost miraculously survives”, Lazzarini noted.
“It has become almost customary that a Commissioner-General must beg for help if we want the services to continue,” Lazzarini said in a message to Palestine refugees.
He explained that the annual shortfalls to the core program budget have regularly neared $100 million over the last years.
The resources available to UNRWA have stagnated, while the needs of Palestine refugees and the cost of operations keep increasing, he said.
There is a de-prioritization of the Palestinian issue due to changing geopolitical priorities and the emergence of new humanitarian crises, noted Lazzarini.
Coordinated campaigns by organizations that aim to delegitimize and defund the Agency and erode the rights of Palestine refugees have increased in frequency and aggressivity,” he said.
He stressed that UNRWA has so far succeeded to manage this chronic underfunding through continuous cost-control and austerity measures, to the point of exhausting them. “This is not sustainable,” he explained.
“In line with universal human rights, you have the right to receive basic services such as health, education and social protection through a social safety net”, said Lazzarini.