News / Palestine

Hammered by US cuts, UN Palestine aid agency short of funds to pay employees

Monday, 09 November 2020 4:19 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 09 November 2020 6:19 PM ]

A Palestinian man reacts during a protest against the reduction of the food basket provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in front of the agency's headquarters in the town of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, October 18, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says it lacks the needed funds to pay the salaries of its employees, months after the administration of outgoing US President Donald Trump decided to cancel Washington’s entire funding to the aid program for Palestinians.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Monday that it had to raise 70 million dollars by the end of the month to be able to pay full salaries for the months of November and December.

The funding shortfall affects 28,000 staffers in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip, among other places in the region, it added.

Tamara Alrifai, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said the agency never recovered from the total funding cut imposed by the Trump administration in 2018.

Before Trump's cuts the US had been providing UNRWA $300 a year, roughly a third of its core annual budget.

Alrifai said 2019 shortfalls were filled by additional support from several Arab states as well as the European Union and individual European states, notably Germany.

This year, she said, “financial support waned," adding that the coronavirus pandemic “didn't help” as key donors faced increased domestic financial pressures, she said.

Alrifai expressed optimism that the administration of US President-elect Joe Biden will restore Washington’s annual 300-million-dollar aid.

“We have engaged very close with the Biden campaign team and they do understand the uniqueness of UNRWA for the stability of the region.”

A year after taking office in 2018, the Trump administration decided to cancel all the US funding to the United Nations aid program for Palestinian refugees, part of a policy to impose maximum pressure on the Palestinians to satisfy Israeli interests and Zionist constituencies in the US..

UNRWA faces serious problems following US aid cut

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees has made an appeal to global powers gathering in Rome Thursday.

The UN agency provides education, health and welfare services to an estimated 5.7 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

About 1.3 million Palestinian refugees live in Gaza.

The crisis of Palestinian refugees began in 1948 upon the emergence of the Israeli regime in the occupied Palestinian lands.

UNRWA, established in 1949, is already suffering from a huge budget deficit that has forced it to scale back services to the Palestinian refugees in recent years.