UNRWA budget still $200m. short after Trump cuts

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Emergency food aid for around a million Palestinians in Gaza may run out from June if UNRWA cannot raise another $200 million following a cutoff in US funding, the agency said on Tuesday.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl, who heads the UN Relief and Works Agency providing aid for Palestinians across the Middle East, said US President Donald Trump had withheld $305m. in funding, far more than the $65m. reported in January.

“You already have a very, very fragile community [in the Gaza Strip],” Kraehenbuehl told Reuters in an interview during an international donor conference for Syria in Brussels.

“So if you suddenly have no certainty about the amount of food aid coming from the UN for a million people... you can just imagine the kind of effects it could have,” he said, although he stressed he was not justifying any link to outbreaks of violence.

Gulf states, Norway and Canada have stepped in with a total of $200m. to help meet a planned $465m. budget for 2018. The United States, long the biggest donor to the agency, is providing just $60m. of a promised $365m., Kraehenbuehl said.

That leaves a $200m. shortfall to fill for rice, flour, sugar and also to keep funding schools in Gaza and the West Bank.

The UN agency’s call for help is made harder by the competing demands on donors for crises in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others.

Kraehenbuehl warned of greater instability in Gaza in part because the economy is already suffering its deepest collapse after a decade of Israeli-led blockades, and internal Palestinian divisions in the coastal strip.

Kraehenbuehl said the shortfall in funding for the agency could also mean there may not be enough money to reopen schools in August and September for the new academic year.

“This is our largest funding crisis ever,” he said.

Egypt also restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its border.

Trump withheld the aid to UNRWA in January after questioning the value of such funding, while the US State Department said the agency needed to make unspecified reforms.

Many Western diplomats saw Trump’s decision as a reaction to the condemnation across the Middle East of his December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The United Nations also voted to reject that recognition.

Kraehenbuehl, a Swiss national, said he had enacted spending cuts to contain costs within the agency and was trying to find new donors in the private sector. Those could be in Gulf countries, or donations made in solidarity with the Palestinians during Ramadan, which will begin around May 16.

Kraehenbuehl said that after donors such as Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates had come forward, he would now seek help from Germany, France, Sweden and Britain, traveling to Berlin later this week. Israel is not a contributor to UNRWA.

“It’s a modest investment to preserving the region from future instability and uncertainty,” he said.