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REFUGEES: Aid for Palestinians Running Out, Warns U.N.

Ushani Agalawatta

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 2003 (IPS) - The United Nations is urging nations to provide money for its Palestinian refugee programme, which risks running out of food for more than one million people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by late March.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has received only 1.5 million dollars after appealing in December for 94 million dollars to fund emergency activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip until June.

”Although the primary solution to the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip lies in the lifting of curfews and closures to facilitate the resumption of economic life in the occupied Palestinian territory, donor support for UNRWA’s appeal is essential for meeting immediate needs,” U.N. Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast told the Security Council on Thursday.

Earlier this week, UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen said that 32.4 million dollars was needed to feed 222,000 families in the Palestinian territory and more than 29 million dollars to fund emergency job creation.

The agency has already cut the size of ration packages to 120,000 refugee families in Gaza, and 1,600 emergency staff have been laid off in the West Bank, said a UNRWA statement.

”We are scraping the bottom of every barrel and stretching every dollar we have, but without immediate donations, our emergency operations are going to grind to a halt,” Hansen told the Security Council.

”The international community must not allow the occupied territory to slip from its sight,” he added. ”Tensions are too high and the need too great.”

Since October 2000, the launch of the Palestinian uprising or ‘intifada’ against Israel, UNRWA has delivered emergency assistance regularly to about 1.3 million Palestine refugees affected by the strife in the territory, 49 percent of the total population, Hansen told the United Nations in an earlier appeal.

Like other U.N. officials who have spoken out in recent weeks, Hansen pointed to fears of war in Iraq as one reason for the slow pace of donations. ”The cutbacks come at a time when the uncertain regional situation makes it ever more imperative that we maintain a lifeline to the refugees in the territories. And yet the paradox is that our emergency funding for the year may be threatened because donors are holding back to see what is needed in Iraq.”

Switzerland is the only nation to have answered UNRWA’s call for emergency funding.

At a press briefing on Thursday, Kenzo Oshima, under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told journalists that the United Nations is asking donors for 120 million dollars to reach a level of ”preparedness” to deal with a humanitarian crisis if war materialises in Iraq.

UNRWA was created following the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict as a temporary institution, but it has become the primary provider of education, health, relief and social services to an estimated four million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

Since the closures in 2000, unemployment has risen to 50 percent in the territory, says the UNRWA, which estimates it needs three million dollars to fund emergency health needs, almost four million for education and almost 10 million dollars for emergency relief and social assistance for families that have lost their homes or income due to the ‘intifada’. (END/IPS/WD/IP/PR/UA/ML/03)