COOPERATION-PALESTINE: UN Appeals to Donors to Help Create Jobs

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 6 2001 (IPS) - The United Nations launched an appeal for assistance Tuesday, urging donors to help finance a programme aimed at generating jobs for Palestinians affected by the deepening of the conflict with Israel since September.

UN official Peter Hansen told a news briefing in Geneva Tuesday that 39 million dollars were needed from donors for the months of March, April and May.

The funds will go towards offering employment opportunities to 325,000 workers who have lost their jobs since the Sep 28 start of the current “Intifada” or popular uprising.

Employment opportunities are to be created in projects of benefit to the communities of the unemployed workers, who the UN plans to involve in repairing homes and other infrastructure damaged by shelling and shooting in the past five months.

Hansen, the commissioner for the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said “we are living under extremely difficult circumstances. Our access problems are severe, and we have continous discussions with Israeli authorities” aimed at getting them to live up to their obligation of facilitating the work of the UN agency instead of “putting obstacles in our way.

“We have not seen any decisive progress…but we are hoping that Israel will realise that it’s not in the interest of the people of the region, including the Israelies, to maintain a situation where humanitarian assistance cannot be extended to everybody that needs it,” he added.

The restrictions on movement in the area in place for the past five months have caused serious damage to the economy of the Palestinian territories, said the UN agency.

World Bank estimates put the losses in revenues suffered since September by the Palestinian National Authority due to Israel’s closure of the territories at more than one billion dollars, while the losses continue to pile up at the rate of eight to 12 million dollars a day, Hansen pointed out.

Whereas in the past, unemployment in the Palestinian territories hovered around 11 percent, the rate has now climbed above 50 percent in Gaza and slightly below that on the West Bank, with an overall average of 45 percent.

“Forty-five percent unemployment sustained over a period of five months for a population where the savings are already eroded is extremely serious, and we are seeing increasing numbers of Palestinians sliding into ever deeper poverty as their savings are exhausted,” said Hansen.

More than 400 people have died since the outbreak of the latest wave of violence. The United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) reported Tuesday that 102 of them were minors (101 Palestinian children and teenagers and one Israeli).

Meanwhile, more than 20,000 people have been injured, 2,000 of whom have been left permanently disabled.

The clashes and the repression have also hurt agriculture, said Hansen. According to the latest estimate, around 65,000 palm and olive trees have been destroyed.

Greenhouses and homes have also been “bulldozed away,” said the official, who lamented that it would take more than five years to recover from the damage caused in just five months.

From September 2000 to February 2001, the number of stillbirths rose 58 percent with respect to the corresponding period of the year before, said Hansen, who added that “there are many reasons for that, but they are all, we assume, inflicted by the conditions of the huge Intifada.”

He also warned that “the vaccination rate, which after many years of effort on the part of UNRWA had been brought up to about 100 percent, complete vaccination coverage, is now sinking down to 84 percent of those who should be vaccinated” – a level that entails a “real danger of spread of disease.”