EU offers an extra $46m to UN’S Palestinian refugee agency
The move is intended to help fill a $217m budget shortfall; four more Palestinians killed by Israeli troops
BRUSSELS: The European Union (EU) said it’s offering an extra 40 million euros ($46 million) to the UN Palestinian refugee agency to help educate children and provide health care in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The EU move announced on Friday is intended to help ill a $217 million budget short-fall left after the United States effectively ended its $350 million contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
The deicit led to the elimination of 113 jobs and 584 staff positions being converted to part-time. UNWRA’S Gaza employees went on strike on Monday to protest pay cuts and dismissals.
The UN agency received contributions of $118 million on Thursday, narrowing a budget gap for this year to $68 million as it aims to ill a shortfall left by a cut in US funding.
Pierre Krahenbuhl, CommissionerGeneral of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the pledges were made at a meeting on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York.
He said the largest funding pledges on Thursday were made by Germany, the European Union, Kuwait, Ireland and Norway.
“Five million Palestinian refugees were following these events very, very closely indeed. It was year of tremendous existential concerns, of great anxiety ... I think it is a very big step that has been achieved today,” Krahenbuhl said.
The United States last month announced a halt in its aid to UNRWA, calling it an “irredeemably lawed operation,” a decision that further heightened tensions between the Palestinian leadership and the Trump administration.
UNRWA provides services to about ive million Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank and Gaza. Most are descendants of some 700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes or led ighting in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation.
The growing refugee count was cited by Washington, UNRWA’S biggest donor, in its decision to withhold funding.
Also on Friday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said four Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, have been killed by Israeli ire during protests along the border.
Thousands of Palestinians protested along the Israel-gaza border fence on Friday. The ministry said three protesters died from gunire and 75 others were wounded.