In early June 2022,
the Advisory Commission of UNRWA met in Beirut. Facing a $100 million budget
deficit and the indifference of donor countries, UNRWA’s future is uncertain.
Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini explained to the Advisory Commission’s
members, all representatives of donor states, that donors have recommended he
reduce services to match the available funds. “How would your ministers decide
on the suggested financial cuts?” Lazzarini asked.
اضافة اعلان
“How many children are you ready to put in one
classroom? Which children should be denied an education? Which patients should
be denied urgent hospitalization? Which families of Palestine refugees who
already report reducing their food intake, will you ask to reduce even more?”
Set up in December 1949, UNRWA was created to help
meet the needs of Palestinian refugees and prevent the collapse of refugee
communities during and after the Nakba, the destruction of Palestinian society
that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel. UNRWA is the main
provider of health, education, and relief services to over 5.5 million
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem. The organization is one of the largest employers of
Palestinian refugees, providing work to over 28,000 full-time employees. On
average, the salaries of its workers support a family of five individuals.
In the past, UNRWA provided a range of services to
Palestinian refugees. This included in-kind food supplies, educational
materials, grants for higher education, infrastructure improvements, and
microfinance credits. UNRWA also contributed to the costs of health care
expenses that its facilities did not provide. But the agency’s funding has been
stressed for decades and its services have suffered as a result. Today, UNRWA
is a shell of its former self.
This is the product of a deliberate campaign by
political opponents in Israel and the US. Former Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly targeted UNRWA and sought to change how refugees
were defined in order to reduce the agency’s funding. During the Obama
administration, Netanyahu relied on Republican allies in the US Congress. His
efforts were bolstered by the Trump White House, which cut all US funding to
UNRWA in 2018.
Although US support was restored by the Biden
administration in 2021, UNRWA continues to face a large budget deficit and
political pressure. Fears are now growing that UNRWA may be ultimately
dismantled. Were that to happen, it would dramatically worsen an already dire
situation, leaving Palestinian refugees bereft of basic services and lacking
protection of their fundamental human rights, and contributing to humanitarian
crises across the region.
Health care
UNRWA provides the only
health care services for the estimated 480,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon,
at a time when the demand for such services has increased sharply in recent
years. Roughly 86 percent of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live below the
global poverty line of $1.90 per day. The country’s financial and political crisis
as well as the COVID-19 pandemic have had a direct impact on Palestinian
refugees and other vulnerable populations. Palestinian refugees cannot access
services provided by the Lebanese Ministry of Health and the refugee population
is caught between UNRWA’s declining services and Lebanon’s collapse.
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are not the only
ones to suffer from UNRWA’s reduced services and enforced austerity.
Palestinians in Syria and Gaza face similar conditions. In Syria, UNRWA’s
facilities and services were directly impacted by the civil war and slow
rebuilding, and these effects were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 82
percent of the estimated 438,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria live below the
global poverty line and more than 420,000 require food and monetary assistance.
After more than 15 years of siege and repeated
Israeli attacks, life for Palestinians in Gaza has become increasingly
difficult. Over 66 percent of Gaza’s population are considered refugees and
UNRWA is the main basic service provider for them; currently it provides food
relief baskets to 1.2 million people in the area.
Education
As part of the campaign
against UNRWA, Israel and its allies have been consistent critics of the
agency’s educational services. Although the repeated claims that UNRWA’s
textbooks incite violence are unfounded, they have found support in Washington.
As a condition for resuming US contributions, the Biden administration required
a review of UNRWA’s textbooks and educational materials. In addition, the
2021–22 Framework for Cooperation agreement between UNRWA and Washington
required the agency to integrate human rights, conflict resolution, and
tolerance education into the syllabus. This suggests that Palestinian refugees
are the source of conflict, intolerance, and human rights violations rather
than victims of Israel’s occupation or of discrimination by host countries.
Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon do not face the same requirements for improving
their educational materials.
Technological solutions and politically motivated educational mandates will not erase decades of underfunding, lack of basic infrastructure, and denial of fundamental rights.
At the beginning of June, UNRWA announced the
establishment of an education advisory group composed of international experts
from a number of organizations, including UNESCO and the World Bank. This
advisory group will provide recommendations on a range of issues of strategic
importance, including the digitization of education. However, the emphasis on
technological solutions, driven in part by the austerity measures placed on
UNRWA, ignores the daily realities of life for Palestinian refugees.
Outlook
The combination of continuing political pressure and a worsening
financial crisis has made it increasingly difficult for UNRWA to perform its
mission. Indeed, UNRWA recently announced that it has received less than 40
percent of the $817 million needed for critical services this year.
Meanwhile,
Palestinian refugees are now entering the 75th year since the Nakba. Yet few
are paying attention to their plight as other crises and humanitarian
emergencies have grabbed headlines and international assistance. Indeed, Sweden
recently announced that it was shifting its contributions from UNRWA to provide
assistance to Ukrainian refugees.
If UNRWA
continues to be starved of support or is eventually dismantled, the situation
of Palestinian refugees will only become more desperate and dire. The Biden
administration can take immediate steps to prevent this from occurring. First,
it can make a commitment to end austerity. Washington must work with its
European, Asian, and Arab allies to ensure that UNRWA is fully funded. This can
be accomplished by increasing the amount of voluntary contributions from donor
states as well as making an agreement for ongoing mandatory contributions from
UN members.
Second, it must
avoid reforms that do not recognize the realities on the ground. Technological
solutions and politically motivated educational mandates will not erase decades
of underfunding, lack of basic infrastructure, and denial of fundamental
rights.
Finally, the
oldest refugee population in the world is no less deserving of basic human
rights than the newest. The Biden administration recently announced that it
would resettle 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in the US. A similar commitment to
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria is needed. This would not eliminate
the Palestinian right of return, but would offer five generations of refugees a
chance for a new future of dignity and hope.
Unless action is
taken now, a humanitarian crisis on a scale similar to the one that forced the
international community to establish UNRWA in the first place could re-emerge;
perhaps then the world will act.
Dalal Yassine is the executive director of Middle East
Voices, a lawyer and advocate for gender and human rights for Palestinian
refugees in Lebanon, and a non-resident scholar at MEI.
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