US fails to give funds to UN refugee agency

After threatening to cut off aid, the Trump administration has failed to make a scheduled payment to the United Nations refugee agency that works with Palestinians, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

A disbursement of about $120 million (Dh440.4 million) was scheduled to be made on Tuesday, and all the paperwork for such a transaction had already been completed. But the payment did not happen, the person said, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss internal matters.

However, the US has not formally notified the organisation, the UN Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, of a final decision on whether funding will be discontinued or maintained, the person said.

A spokesman for the agency, Christopher Gunness, said on Friday: “We are seeing the reports on this matter but have not been informed directly of a formal decision either way by the US administration.”

Freeze threat

President Trump and his ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, have threatened to freeze aid to the Palestinians as punishment for their refusal to accept Trump’s December 6 decision to declare the disputed occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Palestinians claim eastern part of occupied Jerusalem as their capital in a future independent state.

UNRWA pays for schools, clinics and other programmes for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants in five countries or entities.

The US supplies roughly a third of UNRWA’s budget, or about $300 million annually.