OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, hammered by US cuts, said Monday it lacks the funds to pay full November salaries but is confident President-elect Joe Biden's administration will restore support. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) "never recovered" from the total funding cut imposed by President Donald Trump in 2018, agency spokeswoman Tamara Alrifai told AFP. Before Trump ended US support, Washington had been providing UNRWA $300 million a year, roughly a third of its core annual budget.
Alrifai said 2019 shortfalls were filled by additional support from several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar. Both the European Union and individual European states, notably Germany, also helped close the gap, she said. This year, "financial support waned," Alrifai added, noting that the coronavirus pandemic "didn't help", as key donors faced increased domestic financial pressures.
"It was with great regret that I informed our staff today that we don't have sufficient funding at this stage to honour their salaries this month," agency head Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement. If it cannot raise $70 million by the end of the month, UNRWA will not be able to pay full salaries in November or December, the statement added. The funding shortfall affects 28,000 staffers, spread across Jordan, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Only those whose work is covered by special emergency budgets could be spared, Alrifai said. Israel had been critical of UNRWA before Trump's election, arguing its presence was no longer necessary decades after the conflict following Israel's creation in 1948 that created some 750,000 Palestinian refugees. The Jewish state has also criticised rules under which Palestinians can hand down refugee status to their children. After taking office in 2017, the staunchly pro-Israel Trump administration began echoing Israeli criticism of the agency before cutting funds the following year.
A year after the US cut, UNRWA was further rocked by an internal ethics report alleging mismanagement at the agency's highest levels. That led a number of European countries to temporarily suspend support, but Alrifai said "the page has turned" on that episode, with the senior management group having been replaced and key donors voicing full confidence in the agency.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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